


Good Times, Bad Times

by Shaitanah



Category: Being Human
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Apocalypse, Character Death, Gen, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-15
Updated: 2013-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-25 15:23:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/640276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Cutler comes to Honolulu Heights with the purpose of killing Eve, it is Hal who opens the door. And he doesn’t let him enter. From here on out, it’s either a horror show or a sitcom. Cutler is not quite certain what the difference is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Our Heroic Moments

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer** : _Being Human_ belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Epigraph and title from “I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer” by The Cardigans.  
>  **A/N** : I’ve been toying with this idea for ages. It was supposed to be more serious but thanks to certain happenings I’ve decided I want to write something excessively wacky. This will probably have a few chapters. Plus, I shamelessly nicked the idea of chapter titles from _Scrubs_.

To the good times that we shared and the bad times that we'll have.

  
**Part 1**   
**_Our Heroic Moments_ **   


So apparently he’s got unrealistic expectations. 

Well, huh, Cutler reasons, what’s so unrealistic about coming to a house full of people who want you dusted and expecting them to accept help you are so graciously offering them?

Not that he knew the house was _full_ of people who wanted him dead when he decided to drop by. He had expected Tom (who, let’s face it, had a bit of a right to be disgruntled about the whole massacre at the night club debacle) and he had expected whatsername, the guardian of the War Child. They would have been a handful already. But it was Hal who opened the door.

Rewind back to last night: Hal playing the tragic hero (or just hero, you never know, there’s always this patina of tragedy on those heroic types) in the darkness punctuated throughout with the pulsing strobe lights. A solitary supervamp versus a raging beast. (Sounds like a story out of Regus’s never-ending comic book; not that Cutler has ever read it.)

“You’re alive,” Cutler exhales, and feels stupid for spelling it out.

Last night: Hal on his knees (and not in the way Cutler would have wanted him to be), holding his hand, begging to stop the madness. 

This morning: Hal glaring at him on the doorstep of Tom’s house (they _live_ together!?). 

The look makes Cutler’s skin crawl. It’s a bit like the look Hal gave him yesterday on the dance floor. The get-out-while-you-can-or-I’ll-flay-you-alive-when-I’m-done-here look.

It has only just occurred to Cutler that he seriously considered Hal to be proper dead once again. He believed Tom had torn him apart. He must have been in shock and too busy dealing with the Old Ones to react properly, and now pain and relief flood him at the same time, and all he can do is gape helplessly. He makes a move to touch Hal, as if to make sure he is not seeing things, but Hal steps back into the safety of the house, and Cutler meets the barrier that stings and bites and wouldn’t let him go through. He is very explicitly not invited.

There is another person standing behind Hal’s back. Grinning.

“Someone’s got a death wish,” she sing-songs.

Cutler knits his eyebrows, confused. “Hang on. Didn’t I–?”

The girl nods. Her grin turns positively wicked.

“Look!” he blurts out, getting down to business while he still maintains some composure, and has got all his limbs intact. “The Old Ones, they want the baby alive.” 

“Well, duh,” the girl says. Very eloquent. No, really, what does Hal see in her? “What else is new?”

That throws Cutler off.

“You know about this?” He can hear the baby crying in the house. Un-fucking-imaginable. “Why on earth is she still alive then? You’re practically handing them the world on a silver platter!”

“Wasn’t that what you were gonna do?”

Hal turns to her and says: “Alex, please.”

 _Please_. Is he kidding?

The ghost huffs but obediently steps back and disappears in the depths of the house. The baby’s whining becomes even more shrill. Cutler hears a female voice; then Alex’s voice interrupts. They are discussing him. He should really get the hell out of Dodge now.

“I get it,” he says, with a weak smile. “You’re some kind of a hero now. Well, let’s go be heroes!” He raises his fist like he’s Superman ready for take-off. 

Hal gives him a condescending look.

“The Old Ones didn’t like your plan, did they?”

“We had a few disagreements. About the, uh… structure of…” Cutler deflates, and admits: “My videos went missing. And Mr Snow is kind of a dick.”

“That, he is.”

“It’s your fault! If you had driven the point home it would have spared me the embarrassment and you the… _her_.” He thinks about it and adds: “And Tom–.”

That’s clearly a mistake. Hal darts out of the house, teeth bared in an enraged snarl. The sight of him like this, so familiar, makes Cutler’s breath catch in his throat.

“You don’t even get to say his name,” Hal spits. “Not after what you tried to do.”

Okay, trigger material. Process and catalogue for future reference.

“I thought you died,” Cutler says in a small voice. That’s not what he wants to say, but his mouth betrays him. “I thought he ripped you apart.”

“Wishful thinking,” Hal says dismissively.

Cutler doesn’t know how to impress the point on him. He simply reiterates:

“I thought you died.”

He reaches out, fingers brushing Hal’s forearm tentatively. Hal is dressed in the same jacket he wore last night. Looks pretty stylish.

Hal lets Cutler’s hand linger for a moment, then takes a step back. His eyes are hard. Cutler suppresses the urge to keep clinging to him. He feels utterly lost of a sudden.

Unrealistic expectations, that’s right.

“I can help,” he says. “Obviously you’re reluctant to kill the baby yourself. I can understand that. I could maybe–.”

Hal reaches into the flowerpot hanging by the door and fishes a stake out of it. Must be Tom’s idea. Very creative.

The message is quite clear. Cutler decides not to test the “or else” option and gets off the property straight away.

* * *

One of the reasons he likes cinematography as much as he does is that films are often devoid of boring bits. A scene fades to black, and you wouldn’t see the characters going somewhere or waiting for hours, lamenting their sorry lot (unless it’s the whole point of a film). The film cuts to the action bits nine times out of ten.

Cutler wishes he could fast-forward his own life.

It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. The Old Ones, that annoying bunch of deleted species, were supposed to like the plan. To fucking love it. To give him the statue and the country and everything (he thought) he ever wanted. Otherwise, what was the point of it all?

Cutler sighs. He has never been good at autosuggestion (unless it is to do with his potential greatness) and he finds it a bit hard to keep his chin up now. He has been waiting by the house for hours. He can’t come in, and nobody has come out. Meanwhile, the Old Ones are probably eating Wales.

Something finally starts happening. Hal and Back From The Dead leave the house, arguing. He urges her to go back inside and stay with Annie and the baby; she protests that he has yet to keep his promise. Cutler peers at the door intently. But for the stupid invitation barrier, he would already be inside, ringing down the curtain on this whole circus freak show.

At last Hal succeeds in persuading Alex to return to the house. Cutler hesitates. Perhaps it would be better to try and make contact with Annie directly. 

Who is he kidding?

He trots after Hal and forces a small smile when his maker addresses him a murderous look.

“I’m all for stopping the invasion,” he says conversationally. If he can’t be a proper villain, he might as well settle for a half-baked anti-hero. 

“Maybe I should just let Tom stake you,” Hal mutters.

“Oh, we’re going to see Tom? That’s great. I can apologise.” He doesn’t know where this sudden enthusiasm is coming from. Hal looks thoroughly unimpressed. “What? You apologised to me, and what you did was much worse.”

“You haven’t forgiven me.”

Point taken.

“Hal,” Cutler says, probing. “I don’t know the full story, but the Old Ones seem to be really interested in that baby. You may be throwing away your last chance to–.”

They enter a burger bar. The door bell chimes, alerting Tom to their presence. He pokes his head out of the kitchen, spots Cutler and flies into a fit of stake-happy frenzy. Cutler shrinks and hides behind Hal’s back. He fully expects Hal to step aside; that would be understandable. 

Hal blocks Tom’s way and drops a heavy bagpack he was carrying onto one of the tables. 

“Not our last chance,” he says, replying belatedly to Cutler’s interrupted speech. He looks up at Tom and adds: “Let’s focus on one thing at a time. If we can destroy the Old Ones, we may be taking Eve out of the equation entirely.”

Tom sends Cutler one last death glare, takes the bagpack and withdraws into the kitchen. Hal follows him, as does Cutler. Curiosity gets the best of him.

He stares at the ominous device Tom is putting together. It looks suspiciously like–

“Are you going to blow up the Old Ones?” Cutler asks in disbelief. It is as insane as it is ingenious. Why hasn’t he thought of that?

“Feel free to join them,” Tom mutters.

Cutler is building up to a clever retort, but Hal, true to himself, hogs the spotlight.

“Now that we’ve got the bomb, how exactly are we going to–?”

“Simple. I strap it to meself and I go in. Kaboom.”

“But then you’ll get blown up too,” Hal protests.

Tom shrugs. Cutler has never seen anyone so impassive in the face of imminent death. It’s a greatly unsettling sight.

“I don’t know how to build a remote detonator. McNair always did ‘em. I just knocked out the explosives.”

After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Hal says quietly:

“Let me come too.”

“What are you two, the Suicide Club?” Cutler exclaims. There are only so many times he can stand having his heart ripped out at the news of Hal’s demise.

“Oi, are you volunteerin’?” Tom snaps.

Hal puts his hand on the hound’s shoulder. Now is really not the best time to be yelling at each other.

Another cinematographic save is in order. Surprisingly, it comes in the form of Alex and Annie bursting in. Annie is holding Eve swaddled in her clothes. She fixes her dark eyes on Cutler, and he resists the urge to once again hide behind Hal’s back. 

Alex babbles about some people that came to the house, apparently in search of the War Child. So it has started. Tom grabs the bomb and they head outside. They’ve still got the police van, which somehow makes their ragtag Team Save the World even more syrupy. There is justice to be administered, and they are going to MacGyver the Old Ones into oblivion. All they need is to do a power walk to the car and drive off raising a cloud of dust.

In reality, they all pile into the back of the van at once and Cutler almost gets left behind. Tom fills the ladies in on the plan. Dying is fortunately not conducive to the loss of one’s sanity: both Alex and Annie stare at Hal and Tom like they’ve gone completely bonkers.

“We can do it,” Alex says. “Annie and I, we won’t get blown to smithereens by the explosion, right?”

“I’m with them,” Cutler pipes in. “Er… Not in the flesh, though.” Annie gives him another grim look. He thinks he should introduce himself. It’s a polite thing to do before quaintly asking a stranger if you may kill her baby. “Hi. Cutler. Nick Cutler.”

“Like Bond, James Bond,” Alex supplies helpfully. “Except not hot. And a loser.”

That is _mean_.

“Thank you,” Cutler says stiffly. 

She flashes him a venomous smile. “My pleasure.”

The tires screech as the van comes to a stop. Are they at the docks already? 

Cutler watches Hal from the corner of his eye. His maker looks sickly pale. His hands tremble; Annie curls her fingers around his and squeezes comfortingly.

“I’m sorry,” Hal says in a hollow voice. Cutler barely recognizes him. “You had to leave your home once before. And now it’s happening again.”

Annie nods silently. Cutler wants to say something harsh (all these apologies are just overkill), but his mind is racing. They emerge from the van. The last thing Cutler feels is heroic. Annie hands Eve over to Tom. The baby is snoring peacefully. Cutler experiences an awkward surge of jealousy. He would rather sleep through the Apocalypse too.

The girls take the bomb and vanish before any parting words are spoken. That’s nice of them.

The men wait. And they wait some more. And – seriously, how long does it take to blow a bunch of ancient vampires sky high?

Cutler silently makes a list of things he would rather be doing. Despite himself, he ends up giving Hal lingering looks, comparing what he sees to what he remembers. Hal keeps still, arms lax along his sides. He looks deceptively calm, but the bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he gulps down a lump in his throat over and over again and the way he sweeps his tongue over his lips betray him. It’s been sixty years and Cutler still remembers that burning, dizzying hunger. He used to drown in it all the time back when he was too squeamish to feed properly, before Hal taught him better. He cannot fathom why anyone would voluntarily inflict such misery upon themselves.

A loud bang thunders through the docks. The warehouse goes up in flames. A column of fire rises to the sky. The sound is deafening, and Cutler belatedly covers his ears. 

Annie and Alex materialize halfway between the van and the burning ruins.

“Go!” Alex yells. “Go!”

The noise has woken the baby up. She is wailing like a siren. Tom shoves the baby into Hal’s arms and dashes to the driver’s cab. But it’s too late. 

The docks are teeming with vampires. They surround the van in a broad circle, the whole bloody army, and Cutler thinks that maybe he is betting on the wrong horse after all. It’s too late to change the game now anyway.

“You were supposed to get all of them!” Hal says as Annie takes Eve away from him.

“Mr Snow wasn’t there,” Alex answers.

As far as fuck-ups go, this one is somewhere between “the fuck!?” and the flat line. The sight of Annie throwing the attackers around with her telekinetic abilities while holding the War Child is somewhat inspiring and helps to take Cutler’s mind off the fact that Mr Snow is somewhere out there doing the villainous laughter.

Alex raises her hand like she’s just figured out that she can emulate Annie. Tom and Hal grab the stakes from the back of the van. Cutler contemplates hiding under it but decides against it. He staked Golda after all; how much harder can these guys be?

Fast forward through all the embarrassing mishaps to a smoking pile of ashes at his feet. Blade’s got nothing on him.

“I know that bloke,” Tom says, eyes fixed on the dark-skinned man leading the attack. “He’s a werewolf.”

“He works for Mr Snow,” Cutler says urgently. 

A sticky sensation of anxiety settles firmly inside him. There is one thing Mr Snow was right about: Cutler knows only too well what failure tastes like, and if they don’t get into the van and get out of here now, he is about to taste it again.

“We have to go!” he shouts. 

Fortunately, the others are inclined to agree. Tom starts the engine. The girls jump inside and continue to fling the attackers aside, but they both look drained already. Hal continues impersonating Chuck Norris (which is a rather amusing sight since he’s not much of a fighter in general).

The van starts pulling away. Cutler leaps into it, quite certain that they are once again looking for an excuse to leave him behind.

“Hal!” Annie yells. Cutler echoes her.

Hal stakes the woman closest to him and breaks out running. A black limo drifts slowly past him. Hal turns his head and stumbles, the look of sheer terror on his face. Cutler cannot see who is inside but he can guess. He shouts Hal’s name again, snapping him out of his reverie. Hal picks up the speed and finally reaches the van. He stumbles again and starts falling. Cutler and Alex catch him by the arms and pull him in. He rolls onto his back, breathing heavily, as the van swerves, grinds between two Jeeps that most likely belong to someone from Snow’s entourage and breaks away onto the road. Tom revs up.

A few minutes later, Alex asks quietly:

“What do we do now?”

“Go off the radar,” Tom answers. “Gotta hide. Regroup. Then take out Mr Snow.”

Cutler wonders how hard he should pretend this is not happening in order to kickstart the erase-and-rewind mode of the world.

Dear falling star, he thinks. You might have misinterpreted my last wish because I can’t remember asking for a road trip of doom with Childe Harold, his labradoodle, two man-eating slayerettes and a perpetuum mobile-powered wailing mini-goblin. So twinkle, twinkle, little bitch. You’ll get yours just like the rest of this stinking–.

“I did it,” Annie whispers, stunned. “I brought about the vampire Apocalypse. Just like Eve said I would.”

“I wouldn’t be so categoric,” Cutler notes. “Maybe it’s just Britain.”

“No. This is how it starts. I’ve seen it.”

He is about to ask what she means, but then he decides that he doesn’t care. They are all mad here. Especially him.

“Mr Snow must have some weaknesses,” Tom reasons. “We take him out, we take Eve outta the abrasion. Like Hal said. Right, Hal?”

After half a minute of strenuous silence, Cutler looks down. Hal is still lying on the floor between him and Alex. His eyes are glazed over, lips parted slightly. He is not moving aside from rare convulsive inhalations. Cutler curses under his breath, rolls Hal to the side and discovers a pool of blood under him. A large wooden chip of a stake is sticking out of his back, firmly lodged between the ribs. 

“Hal?” Tom calls again.

“Hal is a bit busy now,” Cutler says in a flat voice.

“Doin’ what?”

What he does best, Cutler thinks.

“Dying.”


	2. Our Group Decision

**Part 2**

**_Our Group Decision_ **

“He needs blood,” Cutler says, wondering how many more times he must repeat it before they get it into their thick heroic heads: Hal will die unless he feeds.

“Sure!” Alex throws her hands up. “Pump an addict full of heroin. That’ll help.”

Previously on The Life and Times of Nick Cutler: the shit has hit the fan, they have made their spectacular escape, Hal got semi-staked, and now they are in the forest, arguing about how quickly Hal should bleed to death.

Tom carefully removes the wood chip and bandages the wound. Hal’s breathing becomes more rapid and laboured.

To Cutler’s surprise, Annie backs him up.

“He’s right.” Her voice trembles slightly. She rocks Eve who has finally stopped screaming in her arms. “When Herrick stabbed Mitchell, even transfusions didn’t help. He needs to…” She trails off, but there is no necessity for her to spell it out.

‘What about donor blood?” Alex suggests. “I could rent-a-ghost into a hospital and–.”

“I love that show!” Cutler lets slip. The women flash him odd looks; Tom is apparently not in on the joke. “Anyhow, it won’t work. It hasn’t got the lifeforce to sustain him. He needs it warm and fresh.”

He steps away from the van, very deliberately avoiding to look at Hal. He doesn’t feel like returning to the vampire-infested town, but he isn’t about to let Hal die. Here’s hoping Mr Snow’s remaining gang hasn’t gobbled up all humans yet.

Alex blocks his way. There is hardly a point to it, since he can just as well walk around her (it’s not like the forest is dotted with keep-off-the-grass signs; even if it were, Cutler is enough of a bad boy to ignore them). He gives the insufferable woman a sour look. He should tread softly now that she can do ghost tricks. 

“Maybe this is how it should be,” says Annie. “I’ve seen what he becomes in this future.”

Cutler narrows his eyes. Future talk again. Seriously: _what_?

“You can debate the pros and cons of _this_ future all you like,” he says pointedly. “While I’m getting Hal his medicine.”

“We don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Tom says. Cutler sincerely hopes that it’s Tom coming to his defense. “’S just a small chip, innit? Maybe he’s gonna heal on his own.”

Cutler snorts irritably. Unlikely, considering how deeply the fragment of the stake penetrated, especially if it has pierced something vital. Besides, leaving Hal’s recovery to chance sounds like the worst idea ever. 

He walks around Alex, determined to get out of this damn forest by any means necessary.

“If Hal drinks this much blood, there is no getting him back from it,” Annie says in a steely voice. “He will become a monster. In the long run, maybe this is better. Not just for the world, but for him too.”

Cutler whirls around and stares at her in disbelief. And here he thought these freaks were Hal’s friends.

“It’s not a fucking zombie bite,” he seethes. “It’s not like he’ll lose his mind!”

“Says the guy who’s only too happy to have him go bad,” Alex points out.

That is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Cutler gets it: he killed her, so in a way, she’s entitled to some bitching – but for the last several hours he’s been doing nothing but trying to help.

“You don’t know me,” he says through gritted teeth. “You don’t know what makes me _happy_.” Exorcising her to the ninth circle of hell would definitely produce some endorphins. “Rest assured, his death is not on my happy list.”

He realizes with sudden clarity that it’s true. He is still angry with Hal, but he doesn’t want him dead. And he sure as hell is not going to sit around and watch it happen.

Close-up: Hal’s face, a death mask, as he ruins everything. 

“No blood,” he whispers, and repeats, just to twist the knife in Cutler’s gut: “No blood.”

* * *

Flashback: 1950, a young, prospective solicitor dies in a holding cell, and nobody even notices. Except those tasked with covering it up of course. Evil Roy (he fits the trope so perfectly it’s not even remotely funny), Fergus, Dennis, Louis. The whole fucking lot of them.

Cut to the young solicitor waking up, confused, ravenous with hunger. Close-up of a glass filled with dark-red liquid. It scorches his throat. His body is shaking in the grip of some otherworldly fever. He is being watched by the terrifying creature with razor-sharp fangs that lurks behind the façade of the illegal gambler he was called in to consult.

A twig snaps, returning Cutler’s attention back to the present. He opens his eyes. The film reel behind his eyelids is quite boring, but reality is still much worse.

He leans closer to Hal and whispers his name. He even adds: “Please,” since they’re all being so well-mannered now. If all they require is his consent, Cutler is only too glad to get it out of him. 

Hal looks away from him. Cutler shifts, and winces as something sharp cuts into his hand. It’s the wood chip Tom has extracted from Hal’s back. It looks much bigger than it did when embedded between Hal’s ribs. It must have gone in very deep.

Cutler picks it up, twirls it in his hand. It’s coated with dried blood. He pockets it discreetly and turns back to Hal who seems to be asleep, or at least pretending to be. Cutler sighs, gets out of the van and looks around.

Tom is talking to Annie. They are not whispering, but Cutler finds it hard and unnecessary to concentrate on what they are saying. The coast seems clear. He begins to move away from the van, careful not to make loud noises. 

For all that he is a vampire, his heart nearly stops when Alex appears on the path in front of him.

“Where are you off to?”

“Nature’s call,” he snaps. “Care to oversee?”

“I can smell your bullshit – and I haven’t even got the sense of smell anymore.”

Yeah, he gets it: she’s dead, it’s his fault. Broken record much?

Alex asks quietly, all the venom suddenly drained out of her voice:

“So you’re just gonna kill another person like you did me?”

Cutler feels utterly spent.

“No,” he says. “Not like you. I’m going to find another person, drag them here and force-feed them to Hal. So technically, Hal will be killing them.” The look she gives him makes him feel strangely uncomfortable. “Whatever I am, he made me!”

“When was that?”

Cutler doesn’t see how this is relevant, but he humours her: “1950. Why?”

Alex shrugs. 

“Sounds like you’re a little too old to play the blame game.” 

She turns and heads back to the van. He could go now; she wouldn’t stop him. But he stays rooted to the spot. Hal’s week voice forbidding them to feed him blood rings in his ears. Decades of being on his own, and Cutler still takes Hal’s every word as an order. 

There is a commotion by the van. Cutler pricks up his ears and makes out Annie’s voice:

“…can’t keep making allowances for him just because he is our friend,” she is saying. “George did that for Mitchell time and again; look where it got them both!”

Cutler rolls his eyes. So nice to know he’s not the only person hung up on the past.

He takes the wood chip out of his pocket and looks at it for a moment, then, on impulse, runs his tongue along the length of it. The blood is dry, but he can still taste it. His lips tremble. He bites down on the wood chip to keep from screaming. As usual, Hal’s got it remarkably easy: dying is certainly simpler than dealing with all this insanity.

* * *

When Cutler returns to the van, the others are scattered around in moody silence. Tom is sitting beside Hal, knees pulled up to his chin. He looks a decade older. Apparently lack of sleep, a dash of betrayal, a friend on his death bed and being a first-hand witness to the beginning of the end of the world would do that to you. Cutler would gladly snatch a nap too.

Annie is in the driver’s cab, murmuring something soothing to Eve. Alex is pacing by the van, lifting small twigs with her mind from time to time. A proper Jedi, that one.

Cutler shudders as something cold and wet drops right onto his nose. Another drop slinks beneath the collar of his shirt. Before long, it starts raining. Because life has clearly been too kind to him lately. Cutler climbs into the van, bristling up like a wet sparrow.

“Drip, drip, drop, little April shower,” he mutters under his breath.

The corners of Alex’s mouth quirk up.

“Seriously? _Bambi_?”

The way she looks at him, one would think Cutler personally took part in killing Bambi’s Mum.

Tom snaps up his head.

“That’s it!”

He leaps out of the van and dashes into the thicket without any explanation. Cutler honestly hopes Tom just has a grudge against children’s films and it’s not what it looks like.

Half an hour later: Yeah, it’s totally what it looks like. It looks like Tom dragging a baby deer and holding a big knife in his hand. Cutler cringes. It’s positively satanic.

“You said lifeforce,” Tom reminds him as he shoves the deer into the van, cuts its throat and lets the blood dribble over Hal’s mouth. “C’mon, Hal.”

Hal’s lips part, letting the blood trickle inside. He inhales spasmodically and presses his mouth to the wound, digging his fangs into the animal’s flesh. His body jerks as he swallows, harder and harder. The wet sucking sound makes Cutler’s throat tighten and his own fangs ache. Alex turns away, looking vaguely revolted.

When Hal is done, Tom throws the carcass out and sits back. His lips are pursed. Cutler wouldn’t put it past him to feel guilty. Hal lies still for a moment and then rolls over, sticking his head out of the van, and dry-heaves. Nothing comes out. He breathes in and out noisily, coughs and spits off a clot of blood-red saliva. Tom holds his shoulders gently and helps him to sit up. Cutler watches them both, huddling in the corner of the van, nostrils flaring at the stench of the animal and its blood.

Hal finally stops shaking. He looks at Tom and nods wordlessly. Tom responds with that boyish smile that makes him resemble a puppy.

One dead deer for bad luck, Cutler thinks sullenly. Check.

* * *

In the aftermath of the rain, the air feels fresher. Hal wanders away from the van and Cutler follows him, wading through the damp undergrowth and getting mud stains all over his trousers. His shoes and his suit are ruined, to say nothing of his life.

“How did it taste?” he asks.

Hal dips his hands into the shrubs, collecting raindrops, and wipes the blood off his face.

“Disgusting.”

“You’re up and about, so no harm done.”

He sidles closer, watching Hal attentively. The general air of passive weariness about Hal irritates him.

“What do you want, Cutler?” Hal asks.

It’s a tricky question. Besides, what _does_ Cutler want? Right now, a rocket ship to Mars would come in handy.

“An explanation.” Cutler pushes Hal against a tree trunk. “Fifty-five years. You led me to believe you were dead – and yet, here you are, hanging out with a lyco, collecting ghosts and babysitting the War Child! What is this?”

There are red streaks still visible on Hal’s chapped lips. Cutler takes in the scent, the mingled aroma of blood, sweat, rain and, underneath all that, Hal himself.

“My life,” Hal answers, He is not even looking at Cutler.

“What about my life?” Cutler exclaims. “All of my lives! Destroying me once wasn’t enough, was it? You just had to–.”

“It had nothing to do with you,” Hal protests dryly. 

The knot in Cutler’s stomach tightens. His hand slides down Hal’s chest, circles his body, getting in between him and the tree, and rests over the wound on his back. He presses at it with his fingers and watches Hal squirm. 

He takes the wood chip out of his pocket again and brings the tip up to the base of Hal’s throat. It barely grazes the skin, but for a moment Cutler imagines that he could puncture Hal’s neck and lap at the flowing hot blood.

“After all the arguments,” Hal whispers. “Isn’t this a waste of effort?”

“I don’t give a shit about those delusions Annie has about the future,” Cutler says. “What she thinks you’re going to become. Feel free to turn into a Pokémon for all I care. You can’t die. You hear me? You _can’t_ die.”

Hal leans forth, resting his forehead against Cutler’s. His skin feels hot and damp.

“Then why did you obey when I said I didn’t want blood?”

Cutler freezes. 

He staggers back, dropping the wood chip, and looks at Hal helplessly. His head hurts.

“Fuck!” he screams. He can’t contain it any longer. “Fuck you and your mind games! And them! And _this_!” 

He spins around and starts walking, eager to get away from Hal and all the bloody rats in his attic. He might as well find Mr Snow and ask the old fart to chew his head off – because what else is there? His plan was good. More than good; it was fucking brilliant. But no, Hal had to fuck it all up. And somebody had to nick his videos. And–

“Why do you care if I live or die?” Hal asks.

Cutler trips over a creeping root and nearly loses his balance. He turns to face Hal, breathless with anger.

He always knew his maker was an insensitive prick. Hell, Rachel’s murder was a bit of a tell-tale sign. Hal Yorke’s cruelty was the stuff of legends; yet he was never quite so cruel before as he is now, standing at a distance, gaunt, worn out, in bloodstained clothes, looking at Cutler with feverish, expressionless eyes. 

“Do you have to ask?” Cutler whispers. “What is wrong with you?”

Hal starts saying something, but what comes out is Cutler’s name, spoken in an alarmed tone, as he looks past Cutler. Nick sighs tragically.

“If I look around, there’ll be danger, won’t there?”

Hal grabs his wrist and pulls him into a run. Cutler hates running, especially when there is a need for stealth.

They delve deeper into the thicket. Cutler shivers when an entire waterfall of raindrops gushes down on him from a tree branch. Hal’s knees wobble. Cutler instinctively reaches out to support him. He can always continue hating him later, provided they don’t get turned into fertilizer now.

They hide behind a thick tree and watch a group of men quietly work their way through the forest. 

“Snow’s werewolf,” Hal whispers.

Cutler gulps down nervously. How the hell did the hound find them so quickly?

“Next time,” he mutters, “when I say let me kill the baby, please let me kill the baby.”


	3. Our Dawn of the Dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features car theft, gratuitous wackiness and Hal being pompous.

A good film is all about balance. You have to have your action scenes and your comic relief and maybe a romantic storyline. Clever dialogues, spectacular visual effects and a couple of surprise plot twists would also do your film a lot of good.

Which is why Cutler decides that his film, on the scale from one to ten, currently averages three. Mostly because it has got no balance whatsoever and is rapidly becoming a mindless popcorn action flick. Not that there’s anything wrong with it when you’re watching it at home with an actual bucket of popcorn on your lap.

Except Nick Cutler is no action hero. He can assess his capabilities well enough to understand that he won’t be scaling any skyscrapers anytime soon. He is pretty much Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman before the spider bite, and that, on the scale from one to ten, means LOSER.

Okay, enough wallowing in self-pity. He usually allows himself a total of about an hour a day, and he’s been whining silently non-stop ever since he jumped on the anti-Old Ones bandwagon. Are these things connected, or what?

Scene: EXT. STREET – DAY 

_Peaceful. Quiet. Nobody knows what’s coming._

EXT. EDGE OF THE FOREST – SHORTLY BEFORE

_Two men running. ANGLE ON: their legs as they tear through the thicket_

BACK TO: STREET

_A CAR drives by leisurely. A WOMAN holding a mobile phone is pushing a pram in front of her. The sun peeks gingerly from behind the smoky veil of clouds._

VOICE (V.O.):

Do you think we’ve lost them?

CLOSE ON: THE MEN’S FACES

_They are both looking around warily. Their hair is wet, faces are streaked with sweat._

VOICE (V.O.):

We need another car. The first thing they’d do would be damage the van.

CUT TO: _The MEN walking out of the forest._

ZOOM IN ON _cars of different models in succession._

_The DISTINCTIVE SOUND of a car door opening._

CUT TO: _A CAR speeding away._

DISSOLVE TO: 

“What do you say?” Cutler turns his head and looks at Hal. “You, me, old times.”

He doesn’t know why he is whispering. Doesn’t even know why he is asking: he is driving; he can just–

Hal gives him a Very Cold Look.

“We must go back for them.”

Cutler sighs and wisely decides not to ask why. 

“We should have at least tried to look for weapons or something. You know, to,” he air-quotes, “help us on our quest.” Hal knits his eyebrows. Half of what Cutler says obviously flies right over his head. Cutler snorts. “Wow, you’ve got an extreme case of genre blindness, haven’t you? It’s okay.” He pats Hal’s shoulder condescendingly. “It’s just old age.”

His newfound boldness is intoxicating.

“I’m glad you’re having fun, Cutler,” Hal says tersely.

“I’m actually screaming internally. This is just my defense mechanism. You should try it.”

If this were an American film, they would have guns. Lots of guns that would never run out of ammunition. (Cutler shudders at the thought of turning into Golda’s Bruce Willis wannabe sidekick. He doesn’t talk like that, does he?) They would also drive an off-road vehicle, an armoured Jeep or something. Or a Batmobile. And the world would be in enough disarray to let a little car theft slide. Especially if the owners are dumb enough to leave the keys inside.

Cutler sighs. They could be in England now. Instead their tiny bright orange Beetle is making its way through the forest in search of a dog and two unfriendly Caspers to rescue. Something tells Cutler Tom isn’t in that much need of a rescue per se. Cutler still can’t get over the fact that he has tracked and caught a deer pretty much bare-handed.

“You should see them on the day of the full moon,” Hal says distractedly when Cutler shares his grudging admiration.

“You’re some kind of an expert now?”

“I always have been.”

“You didn’t use to bunk with them,” Cutler scoffs.

“You used to feel sorry for them,” Hal replies.

It wasn’t a habit really. He never openly expressed any sympathy for Hal’s caged beasts. But he wasn’t, and still isn’t, a big fan of dog fights. They seem like a waste of time (and money, especially in Hal’s case, since he would frequently bet and lose).

The closer they get to the spot where they left the van, the more impenetrable the forest becomes. The trees grow too close to each other; sometimes the Beetle can barely squeeze between them. It gets bogged down; mud splatters from under the turning wheels.

Hal raises his head, listening. The forest is eerily quiet, apart from the noise their car makes. Cutler thinks they are at the height of stupidity now: to get away from the people who want to kill them only to find themselves wandering back like sheep to the slaughter.

No wonder he never had any friends.

“Hey,” he says thoughtfully, “what happens if you run a vampire over?”

“Depends on the vehicle, I assume,” Hal says. “And the vampire.”

Cutler grins. “Want to run a few tests?”

The Beetle finally moves off. Bouncing over the ruts and protruding roots, it reaches the van and almost crashes into it. It looks abandoned and the tires are perforated, but the sounds of a fight are heard in the distance. Cutler steps on the gas.

“Forget the vampires,” Hal says urgently. “Aim for him.”

There goes the battle of the century: a funny-looking orange Beetle versus a brutish black lyco. As the car collides with the body, it makes a very distinctive thud. One – zero in favour of the Beetle.

The werewolf (Milo; Cutler remembers that Mr Snow called him Milo) doesn’t stay down for long. And – oh! – he does have a gun. He rises like the Terminator, pointing the barrel at the windshield. The level of “cool” in reality has almost reached that of the films – just when Cutler has begun wishing it would go down.

Luckily, the others don’t need much prodding. Alex teleports straight in, grousing about the size of the getaway vehicle. Tom lunges at Milo, and the gunshot thunders up to the sky. 

“If you care about the safety of the child,” Milo growls, “then this is the biggest mistake you could make.”

Annie tears him off Tom and flings him aside before he can add anything else. They both jump into the car, and Cutler drives off as fast as he can manage. 

Major déjà vu, déjà panicked and déjà escaped.

* * *

They decide unanimously that the Beetle is far too conspicuous to keep it and leave it a few streets away from where they originally took it. It was a spontaneous test-drive. The owners should be grateful.

“We need to go back to the house,” Tom says. In Cutler’s opinion, few ideas are dumber than this one. Tom elaborates: “There’s some things that could be made into weapons. And a car.”

They plod on in silence. Eve squeaks occasionally, swaddled in Annie’s clothes. 

“What about me?” Alex asks. “My unfinished business… thing?”

Cutler tenses, dearly hoping that she doesn’t mean revenge. 

“Alex, I…” Hal trails off and gives a small, helpless shrug.

She nods, seemingly composed, but her chin trembles slightly. 

“I know it’s pretty much the end of the world,” she says, “but what do you know, my world’s already ended.” 

She looks like a ghost then, a little lost, a little scared and very dead. But there is steel in her, there is character that wouldn’t let her just fade away – which means the only way to get rid of her is have her pass over, and suddenly Cutler understands what promise Hal has made her, and he really wants Hal to keep it.

Hal’s train of thought must be going marginally in the same direction. He stops, looking vaguely apologetic. 

Wait a minute. _Now?_ Cutler’s mouth drops open. Hal wants to take care of it _now_?

“We’ll stop by the club, see what’s what,” Hal says. Alex visibly perks up.

Cutler hopes the others would protest, but they don’t. Tom nods silently. 

“Uh, Let’s Split Up, Gang?” Cutler blurts out. “Seriously?” Okay, _this_ idea is dumber than going back to the B &B.

Hal tells them to give him two hours and promises to meet them in the house. Cutler watches him and Alex leave in one direction and Tom and Annie in the other. This is what being the fifth wheel feels like. On top of everything, he has to choose a team now. As much as he wants to keep an eye on Hal, he doesn’t feel like returning to his crime scene, especially not with Milo’s people lurking everywhere.

“My God, I’m surrounded by non-genre-savvy people,” he mutters dejectedly and trots after Tom and Annie.

The house is clear, or maybe it’s a trap, but at this point Cutler isn’t sure how much he cares. Hunger stirs inside him along with irritation, but exhaustions tops everything. He hasn’t slept for ages, and in this department vampires are not nearly as superhuman as one would like to believe. He bumps into the invisible barrier that stings him in warning, and lingers on the doorstep. 

“Okay then,” he calls out casually. “I’ll just wait outside, waving my banner that says: War Child is here.”

“Oh, come in,” Tom says testily.

Cutler edges forward. The invisible defence is gone. He shuts the door behind him and looks around. A bar in the living room; now that’s hip. Cutler inches closer to it. Nobody seems to mind, so he pours himself a glass of some liquor without even looking at the label and downs it at a single draught. 

Annie is standing in front of a large mural on the living room wall depicting Hawaii. It’s your garden variety postcard scenery: a beach, a bright blue expanse of the sea and the sky, and rolling green slopes in the background. Everything about the house is gaudy and cosy at the same time. Cutler cannot imagine Hal living here.

The picture mesmerizes him. It draws his attention and makes it difficult to look away. He thinks about beaches and his ambition to own Brazil. Brazil is all about golden sand, latino jazz, bronzed bikini-clad girls and autonomy. Freedom from drab warehouses, the smell of fish and industrial fuel in the docks, from brutes like Fergus and old-timers like Griffin. 

“When Mitchell first brought me here,” Annie says to no one in particular, startling Cutler out of his ruminations, “we had a party. Just the four of us. We wore flower necklaces and danced in front of this wall, pretending we were in Hawaii.”

Tom ambles up to her and tentatively wraps his arm around her shoulders. Annie sobs, covers her mouth with her hand, and for a moment Cutler is afraid she is going to break down crying, a full-on flood of hysterical tears. Crying and panic attacks unnerve him.

He slinks off upstairs and wanders from door to door before he finds a light, tidy room. He needs no confirmation that it’s Hal’s: it’s too clean, too neat to be anyone else’s. He smirks when he spots an exercise bicycle. Hal _has_ been working out.

Books, too. Lots of books. Hal would read to him or make him read while casually sinking his teeth into Cutler’s shoulder or wrist or thigh, just because he could. 

The bed is narrow, meant for one person. 

There is a photo on the mantlepiece. A portrait of an old man. Cutler takes a closer look, wondering why Hal would keep a photo like that. Someone important?

Tom trudges in, takes the photograph away from Cutler and shoves it into the bag, saying that Hal might want it. It’s clear that Tom is far from certain they will ever return to this place. 

They go back downstairs. Tom collects all sorts of stuff from all over the house. Some domestic junk: washing detergents, kitchen oil, screws and nails. He empties the fridge and after brief hesitation adds a change of clothes for Hal and himself. Knives, stakes and crosses go into the bag as well. Cutler squints and looks away.

Annie packs Eve’s belongings: crawlers, diapers, bottles. Her cheeks are streaked with tears, but she seems to have regained her self-control. Cutler fidgets and finally plucks up his courage to ask:

“Annie? That future you were talking about. What is it?”

Her hands clench around a pair of socks. She puts them into another bag and starts ramming the stuff inside it to make more room.

“Eve died in the future,” she says flatly. “She took me into Purgatory and showed me her memories. Our future.”

“It’s pretty bad,” Tom supplies. “Though you’d prob’ly like it.”

Cutler ignore the obvious dig.

“Let me get this straight. Some person who may or may not be the War Child took you to the theme park version of the future – and you believed her?” Annie doesn’t bother replying. Cutler prods again. “We are all operating under the assumption that the prophecy of the War Child is true. It’s one thing to have the Old Ones believing in it and another thing to let ourselves panic over it.”

“Everything else on the bloody parchments came true!” Annie snaps.

Cutler sidles closer, leans into her and says quietly:

“Then you know what must be done, don’t you?”

His insides twist like he is on a rollercoaster and his wagon is taking a plunge. He flies across the room and crashes into the wall. Pain jolts up his spine. Annie’s eyes are icy-blue as she relinquishes her ghostly grasp on him and lets him drop in a heap on the floor.

“Don’t you dare tell me I must kill my baby,” she spits.

Cutler’s tongue has always been his worst enemy.

“Ah, but she’s not yours, is she?” he says as he scrambles up on his feet. “She’s George and Nina’s. You’re just a caretaker.”

Another jolt of pain. This time his head hits the wall, and starbursts explode before his eyes. Tom calls Annie’s name urgently and grabs her hands.

“When this is all over, I’ll the first in line to stake him,” he says. “But right now we could use an extra pair of hands.”

Cutler can’t decide if this is flattering or insulting. He rubs the back of his head and reminds himself to stop pissing off ghosts.

“It’s too late,” Annie says. Cutler looks up at her and doesn’t like what he sees. Straight-up hostility is far less alarming than this strange vulnerability written across her face. “If the world that I’ve seen is already happening, then it’s too late. And if her death does not stop it, then… what does it make me?”

“A monster, I guess.” The sodding irony of having to say this to her is not lost on him. “But you’re in good company.”

They are saved by the bell (or rather the front door snapping open) from having to continue the awkward conversation. Hal and Alex are back, which means it’s time to go.

On the way out, Tom flashes Hal an inquiring look. Hal shakes his head silently.

“I’m missing,” Alex explains. “The police didn’t take my body, but someone did.”

A dead girl makes for a pretty macabre souvenir, Cutler thinks. He is a little disappointed: she is quite clearly sticking around, which means he needs to be on the lookout for two Darth Ghosts instead of one.

The car turns out to be an old soft-blue Merc. Hal used to have a much more sophisticated taste, colour-wise – and props for Cutler for not commenting on it out loud.

They squeeze into it, Tom claiming the shotgun and Hal being the designated driver after a short argument. Cutler ends up in the backseat with the ghosts, doing his best to look unaffected by this. Annie is once again swaddling Eve. If they are lucky, the War Child might just suffocate to death under all those layers of ghostly fabric.

They get out of town with no complications. Either it hasn’t occurred to Milo to set up patrols, or they just got lucky for once. They move on, quiet and determined, even though Cutler is pretty sure none of them has a clue where they are headed. The silence it getting on his nerves. He bends forth and manages to reach the radio, catching some pop station. The song that is playing is downright mocking him.

At least I’ve got my frie-e-ends…

Cutler cringes and turns it off.

They are moving north. The weather changes for the worse again; the sky becomes clouded, a few heavy drops plop down on the windshield. They are running low on petrol and stop to refill the tank before it’s too late. Cutler tries the radio again. This time it’s blaring Adele, which is even worse.

“I hate to bring this up again,” Alex says, “but, uh… Any idea what we’re doing exactly? It’s getting dark and we seem to be going nowhere.” That’s a valid question. “And what about the Old Ones? Do we give up and run or do we take the fight to them?”

All of these are valid questions. Naturally they are followed by uneasy silence. 

“We would not seek a battle, as we are,” Hal utters eventually. “Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it.”

Because there is no way Hal Yorke can speak plain English. The stars aren’t aligned for that.

Alex rolls her eyes. “Meaning?”

“Both,” Tom pipes in. He glances at Hal uncertainly. “Both, right?”

Hal nods. Tom grins like he’s just broken an Enigma cipher all on his own. Cutler is only too happy to let him have the chore of acting as Hal’s personal interpreter because Cutler himself hasn’t got a clue about what’s going on in his maker’s head anymore. 

“We gotta find a safe place,” Tom says. “We all need rest. Some of us need sleep. Then we make new weapons and come up with new strategies.”

No one voices it but they are all thinking the same thing: “safe” is rapidly becoming the synonym of “non-existent”. Hal reaches into his pocket, fishes out a domino and twirls it absent-mindedly between his fingers. That’s a new quirk. Cutler catalogues it for future reference.

“We could go abroad,” Alex suggests. “Always wanted to visit France.”

“That would require proper papers,” Cutler notes dejectedly. France would be nice. Until such time as Mr Snow brings it under his control as well.

“How did the Old Ones even get here?” asks Alex.

“By boat,” says Hal. “In a cargo hold.”

“That explains the crankiness.”

Tom rubs his eyes wearily. He looks so worn out that Cutler is suddenly very glad he is not driving.

“Now I regret giving the camper van to Dewi,” Tom mutters.

Hal looks down at his domino and says thoughtfully:

“Don’t. We’re not going to live in a car.” He raises his head, lighting up with new determination. “I can think of a place. It is sufficiently isolated and has no known connections that could be traced back to us. So unless they follow us, which we shall hopefully notice and avoid, we should be safe there. The only problem is, some people might not be happy to see us there.”

Tom knits his eyebrows and then smiles. Annie looks resigned. Once again, Cutler decides not to ask.

Scene: EXT. ROAD – NIGHT

_A BLUE MERC trundles along the road, passing by populated areas with caution. It continues north, carrying its weary passengers to the deceptive safety of the empty faraway lands._

BIRDVIEW SHOT: _Fields and forests and city lights. A starless night._

FADE OUT.


	4. Our Double Twattage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Symmetry is the first thing you would want in your sandwich._

Fade in: a tiny island bathed in the light of the early morning sun. The sky is unapologetically blue for this time of the year, dotted with pudgy fleecy clouds that have as though come out of a cartoon. Brightly coloured boats sway in the harbour, rocking against each other with a gentle tapping sound. Patches of sunlight run over the water, making the reflection of the vessels ripple.

The green of the island is sprinkled with white and grey installations of fishing villages and small crofts. It looks so peaceful, but for the fact that the blue Merc has been circling all four miles of it non-stop because apparently they’ve got no idea where they are going. The journey is becoming more and more like The Proclaimers song in reverse.

After a long and arduous drive (the last third of which Cutler has been at the wheel as per the division of labour), Nick wants nothing more than to crash somewhere and hibernate for a century. Asking around finally leads them to a small, out-of-the-way fieldstone cottage. It seems so pastoral that Cutler can’t help wondering what sort of people live here – and why on earth they would let this ragtag band of refugees in.

Annie knocks on the door.

For a while, the cottage appears to be silent. Then, the door opens, revealing a woman with shortly cropped hair and disconcerting light eyes. Both she and the group pause, forming quite a picture.

“Oh,” says the woman, collecting herself. That’s pretty much all she manages to say. 

A teenage boy peeks out of the house over her shoulder and concludes, arguably more eloquently:

“Well, fuck me.”

The woman turns to look at him. He makes a show of zipping his mouth shut.

Fast forward: half an hour later, there is a cup of coffee sitting on the table in front of Cutler. It is a poor substitute for a bed or a proper breakfast, but right now he feels like he is in heaven.

The woman’s name is Yvonne. She talks like a schoolteacher (which she apparently is) and reminds Cutler of every authority figure that he simultaneously fancied and feared during adolescence. There is something off about her. She appears human, but she can see Annie and Alex. Maybe she is a psychic.

The teenager is a vampire, obviously dry, though he doesn’t exhibit any ticks like Hal does. Cutler can’t smell blood anywhere in the house. It figures that nowadays Hal would be friends only with weirdoes like that.

“Might I ask,” Yvonne says as she hands Tom a mug of tea. “How bad is it?”

“I won’t lie to you,” says Annie. “It’s pretty bad.”

“And you brought them here?” the vampire pipes in.

Yvonne sighs. “Adam–.”

“What? I’m just saying. We thought media attention was bad, and now there’re vampires taking over the world, and the first place you could think of coming to was _here_.”

“Adam Jacobs!” Yvonne said in a steely voice. “We do not turn people in need away. Especially if they are in peril.”

After a moment of tense silence, Adam lowers his head.

“I know. I’m sorry, Annie. I’m just… processing.”

Annie nods. “It’s okay. We all are.” She runs her fingers through her hair and says: “We hate to intrude,” (she should really speak for herself; Cutler is all for intruding if it lets him assume a horizontal position and turn off the horror sitcom that his life has become) “but we are tired and we’ve got nowhere to go.”

Yvonne covers Annie’s hand with hers and smiles.

“Don’t even mention it. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. After what you did for us, it’s only fair.”

Cutler makes a mental note to find out more about who else owes whom around here. 

* * *

Once they are settled, he finds that sleep is determined to elude him. The cottage is small and lacking in beds. Tom drops in the guest bedroom and Hal passes out like a light right on the living room sofa. 

Cutler is too wired to sleep. He pokes around the fridge and makes himself a sandwich while nobody is looking. He sits down by the sofa and checks his mobile phone and finds out, not without a great deal of surprise, that his Twitter account had been shut down. By the government, no less. Now it would probably systematically deny knowledge and sic little green men on him. 

Hal stirs. 

“How long have I been asleep?”

Cutler glances at the display of his phone.

“A couple of hours.” He moves, letting Hal get up. “How’s your, uh…” He points vaguely at Hal’s back.

Hal pulls up his shirt, exposing the damaged patch of skin. There is only a faint scar there now; soon it will fade as well.

“Where is everyone?”

“Tom is still sleeping. The others are outside with Adam. Yvonne’s at work.”

Hal rubs his eyes and glances at Nick like he’s only just noticed him.

“You look terrible. Get some rest.”

It doesn’t sound like an order, not like Hal used to speak to him, but it doesn’t sound like concern either. Cutler takes off his jacket wordlessly. He would kill for a new suit now. And a new country while a benevolent genie is dishing out wishes.

Hal stops on his way to the door. Nick is pretty sure there is a trope for this sort of melodramatics.

“Why did you stay, Cutler?”

If the rest of the group usually generates questionable ideas, Hal has taken it a bit further by adding a question mark at the end.

“I’ve got nowhere else to be,” Cutler replies with a huffish snort. 

“Is that the only reason?”

If Hal continues in the same fashion, he would have to make a supply run because very soon he’ll be running out of salt to pour on those bleeding wounds.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Cutler snaps, and flops down on the sofa, his back on Hal.

The door opens and shuts with a soft sound. Cutler shifts, fitting more comfortably in the indentation made in the cushions by Hal’s weight. His fingers are tingling, dizziness churns in his system. His eyes are so dry they feel sore. These are the most telling signs of sleep deprivation, and yet, he finds it difficult to relax enough to sink into sleep.

He nuzzles the armrest with his cheek, unintentionally inhaling Hal’s scent that clings to the upholstery. Remembers blood-soaked sheets, broken furniture, torn-up wallpaper, vicious bitemarks on dead bodies. The things Hal made him watch, the things Hal did to him. And after that, Hal has got the gall to seek redemption or whatever it is that he is doing by going clean and playing nice. 

Cutler squeezes his eyes shut. To hell with all that. 

The smell persists, stirring up resentment, nostalgia and something else, unnameable and primal, even as Cutler finally succumbs to sleep.

* * *

It’s dark outside. For a brief moment Cutler honestly can’t remember where he is. His head is buzzing with hunger as he completes the torturous comeback to reality. By now, his film is most definitely a saddening bore.

He finds the others assembled in the kitchen. There are dinner leftovers, which Cutler eyes hungrily, staunchly ignoring the other hunger clawing at his throat. Annie is helping Yvonne with the dishes, while Hal, much to Cutler’s disturbed surprise, is holding Eve. (Should Hal even be trusted with a baby? Should babies even be held so frequently? Don’t they have, like, no immune system whatsoever?)

Cutler plops down on the chair next to Hal and leans towards the little monster as he whispers secretively:

“You know this is all your fault, don’t you?”

Hal grimaces. 

“Are you trying to guilt-trip a baby?”

He makes it sound so crude. Cutler flashes him an innocent smile and starts humming _The Omen_ theme. Incidentally, the little monster appears to enjoy it because she snores peacefully in Hal’s arms as opposed to her default wailing mode.

“So do you really believe all that twaddle that’s written about her?” Adam asks.

“They seem to,” says Annie.

“Well, it’s human skin,” Cutler mutters. “Gotta be serious.”

Alex makes a gagging sound. Annie addresses Cutler the look that clearly spells: step away from my baby. He complies, moving out of harm’s way.

“Yeah, but the saviour?” Adam rolls his eyes. “And she’s gonna destroy everyone by _dying_. Sorry but it sounds really messed up.”

Cutler snorts. What else is new?

“It may be poppycock,” Yvonne comments, “but the poor girl isn’t going anywhere. That much is settled.”

Cutler chuckles to himself at the controversy. It’s almost like Mr Snow has told them in person to keep this precious thing safe for him and that’s precisely what they are going to do, efficient as they are. 

“Well, the blob is George and Nina’s,” Adam mutters. “No fucking way in hell they’re getting near her.” He glances back at Yvonne with a sly smile. “What, no naughty step? No washing my mouth with soap?”

Talk about functional relationships.

Yvonne shakes her head. “Not this time.”

Cutler observes the group from the corner of his eyes. Annie makes tea. Maybe she is so exhausted that she has miscounted, or she has mistaken him for Alex on top of forgetting that ghosts can’t drink, but he gets a cup too. 

Tom compliments the cottage. Adam, having performed his duties as the man in the family, regresses to his teenage self and starts making lewd comments regarding Alex, to which she responds with unimpressed death glares (that is totally a thing in her case). Adam’s attempts to admire her cleavage while simultaneously assuring her that he means no disrespect and that he is in any case take by his own gorgeous foxy lady (something that all womenfolk must undoubtedly view as their loss) result in Alex levitating a saucer with the express intention of flinging it at the boy’s head. Cutler hits the leg of her chair with his foot in warning and hisses:

“Pipe down, Hazel the McWitch!”

Before she can answer, Adam lights up.

“Finally! Someone who can appreciate my _Rentaghost_ references.” He high-fives. Cutler returns it, slightly bewildered.

(Who on earth recruited a teenager? And, more importantly, why?)

The only way to survive this bizarre reality is to ignore it. Cutler walks over to the sink and rinses his cup, intent on going outside and ignoring it alone. He puts it on the plate rack and turns around, practically bumping into Yvonne. The kitchen is very small; there is no room for manoeuvring.

Slow-motion: both of them stumble and reach out to hold onto something for purchase. That something is the sink; they clutch at it, and Cutler’s fingers unintentionally fall over hers. Four voices shout discordantly in utter panic:

“No! No! NO!”

Freeze-frame.

Yvonne withdraws her hand and covers her mouth, breathing out: “Oh my…”

“Shit,” concludes Adam. “There we go again.”

Cutler blinks. “What?” Why is everybody suddenly acting like a bomb has dropped in the vicinity of the cottage?

“‘Scuse us,” says Tom, and the next thing Cutler knows, he and Hal are dragging him up the stairs. Cutler is too stunned to put up much of a resistance.

“Wait! What–?” They shove him into the guest bedroom and attempt to close the door in his face. He grips it and stops it from moving. “What is going on? For heaven’s sake, it was an accident! If you’re afraid that I might– She’s not my type! I’m not even that hungry! Hal!”

“It’s for your own good.”

Cutler finally manages to gain control of the door and pushes it wide ajar.

“What is!?”

Hal and Tom exchange looks that he decidedly does not like.

“Yvonne is a… succubus,” Hal says.

Cutler can almost see the turning point, after which his life veers away from an action flick into the realm of gothic fantasy.

“A _what_?”

“She touches ya, you fall in love with her and then you die,” Tom explains, ever so helpfully. “Well, you’re already dead, so you’ll just go bonkers for a bit.” He averts his eyes. “We had a situation last time.”

Cutler’s eyes widen. He processes the information and gives Hal a pointed look.

“Thanks for the warning. But I don’t feel any different. I’m most certainly not _in love_ with anyone.”

“It takes time,” Hal says patiently. “Fortunately, when you’re removed from her presence, it passes quite quickly. Then you’ll just have to make sure you won’t touch her again.”

That’s all very moving and shows how much they care (ha-ha), but Cutler disagrees that locking him in like an ill-behaved child is the best alternative. He is pretty sure he is not about to start swooning over Yvonne of all people any time soon.

The door slams shut despite his protests. Cutler hits it with his fist (that actually hurts, ow).

“Hal! Let me out! Hal, it’s not fair!” He can hear their footsteps as they go back downstairs. He sighs and drops on the bed. At least it’s more comfortable than the sofa. “Pricks.”

Having slept through most of the day, he doesn’t feel tired, so he lies there, arms folded over his chest, and imagines a thousand painful ways to kill both Hal and Tom. It’s bad enough to be treated like a demon in their little paradise; now they have to jump all over him for doing something that was a complete accident – and it’s their fault for not having warned him anyway.

Cutler huffs. A succubus. Things like that probably don’t even exist. Maybe it’s a cunning ruse to kick him out of their little gathering. It’s not like he _wants_ to be here. It’s not like–

It occurs to him that someone is standing at the foot of the bed. He sits up, looking at the woman in a white nightgown. It’s unmistakably Yvonne, albeit with blond hair streaming down her shoulders, and how on earth did she get here anyway? He opens his mouth, but she positions herself on the bed and brings her finger up to his lips, indicating that he should keep silent. She cups his face with her hands and kisses him gently. Perplexed and vaguely terrified, he kisses back nonetheless, sifts his fingers through her hair and inhales the perfume that seems faintly familiar. 

She pushes him down on the bed, stretches suggestively on top of him and unbuttons his shirt. There is not a single coherent thought left in his head. He trails his fingers down her hips, sneaks his hands beneath the gown. She covers his chest in soft, teasing kisses. 

He can feel blood coursing under her skin. He cups the back of her head and pulls her closer and kisses her hard. Her mouth tastes of metal. She flicks her tongue over his released fangs, almost like she’s asking for it.

Cutler’s heart skips a beat.

He plunges his teeth into her neck, a nearly animalistic desire taking full control of him. Her blood feels hot and honey-sweet, unnaturally so. He drinks until he can take no more. When he looks up, he can see Hal standing by the bed.

Fear paralyzes Cutler.

He killed Yvonne. In her own home. Her body is a broken mess of tangled hair and bloodstained garments, suddenly so heavy over him, pinning him to the mattress. She feels eerily cold for someone who has only been dead for a minute. Hal will tear him apart for this. 

Cutler tries to think of some kind of justification for his actions. She started it. She came to him. An old, familiar fear ingrained in his marrow stirs within him.

Hal comes closer.

He brushes his finger over Cutler’s lips, and it comes away smeared with blood. Hal licks it off, sucking the finger into his mouth. His eyes are black.

* * *

Cutler awakes with a start, drenched in sweat and choking on a scream.

Really, Hal, he thinks when his head hits the pillow again. Thanks for the heads-up.

* * *

In the morning Cutler finds the door unlocked. It’s very nice of them to trust him to go down the stairs all on his own.

Hal and Tom are making sandwiches in the kitchen. More precisely, Tom is making sandwiches and Hal is criticising them because the slices are too thick and the whole arrangement lacks… er… symmetry. Because obviously symmetry is the first thing you would want in your sandwich.

Cutler looks around cautiously, unwilling to run into Yvonne, and approaches the table.

“How are you feeling?” Hal asks by way of greeting. “Any, uh… dreams?”

“About… you know,” Tom adds, and tilts his head towards the front door.

Cutler frowns, then hears Yvonne’s voice and barely resists the urge to hide under the table.

“Oh. Yeah. Absolutely. But I feel fine now. No desire to massacre all five and a half humans on this godforsaken scrap of land in order to prove my feelings if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Ya never know,” Tom observes. “‘S different for everybody. You might wanna read her some poetry.”

Cutler narrows his eyes. 

“Is that what you did?” he asks Hal whose face promptly turns stony.

“Nah, he barricaded himself in his room,” Tom says mirthfully. “Very brave.”

“I was concerned for the safety of the entire town. You kept trying to show her your _stake_.”

“Stakes! Many!”

“I’ll have you know that if I’d put my mind to it–.”

“What, like you did with Michaela?” There is slight condescension in Tom’s voice, and all Cutler wants to know is who Michaela is and how, when, why and what exactly happened.

“That was an unfortunate side effect of you being there,” Hal mutters resentfully.

“Why don’t you just admit you can’t talk to women? At least when you ain’t all blooded up.”

“Because I can!”

“Is that why our first date ended with you running out on me and our second date got me killed?” comes Alex’s voice. She saunters into the kitchen, snags a slice of cheese and brings it up to her mouth before she remembers that she can’t eat. Hal and Tom give her odd looks. “What? I thought we were trading stories.”

Hal searches for an escape route and finds it in the form of Adam trundling down the stairs. The boy looks sleepy but pleased with himself.

“Adam–.”

“Hey, don’t ask me, man!” He raises his hands defensively. “I’ve had tons of action and I’ve got plenty of juicy stories to share but not while my sexy lady’s here. That’s just impolite.”

“Duly noted,” Hal says curtly. “I was wondering if there are any routines I could perform here. I’ve had a bit of a setback as you probably know.”

Adam scrunches up his face to demonstrate a thought process of some kind. Cutler can almost see a light bulb flickering to life over his head.

“Got a bicycle. A real one. In the shed. It’s probably older than me but it works fine. You could take it for a spin. We’ve actually got two. The second one’s got a slight problem with the brakes.”

Hal nods and excuses himself. After a moment of hesitation Cutler slinks off after him. He hasn’t ridden a bicycle since his school days. Should be fun.

* * *

The bicycle rattles plaintively as Cutler rolls it out of the shed. He doesn’t know which one it is, but taking his luck into consideration, it’s probably the one with the faulty brakes.

Hal glances at him from the side of the road where he is adjusting the height of the saddle. He doesn’t look too pleased.

“You need supervision,” Cutler points out.

“Hardly by someone who’s only been off the blood for three days, and involuntarily at that.”

“ _I_ need supervision,” Cutler says irritably. “What if I pounce on Yvonne?”

Hal appears to be quite willing to take that risk. 

“I’ll race you,” Cutler suggests. “If I win, you tell me the whole story. Starting with the bloke in the photo.”

“And if I win?”

Cutler gives him a wry smile.

“You never had trouble collecting your debts before. We’ll think of something.”

He mounts his bicycle, dearly hoping it won’t fall apart on the move. Hal mutters something unintelligible but joins him on the road. It’s a fine day, if a little cold, and the last thing Cutler wants is to spend it bickering with the other members of Team Stop the Old Ones. 

He counts down from three, and they take off. The circular road twists ahead, going ever on and on just like the Professor promised. Soon it becomes clear just how many hours Hal has spent on that training bike of his. Cutler has never been much for legwork, but he does his best, unwilling to lose. The wheels creak and the chain jangles and the green-grey scenery blurs into a continuous smudge of colour around him. He remembers to breathe once in a while, and then it’s just like when he was little: his chest burning with every fast inhalation, the wind in his hair, fingers numb from gripping the handlebars too tightly. 

He glances at Hal, perhaps hoping to see something beneath the tragic mask Hal has been wearing for the last few days. Maybe there is something after all. Hal’s lips quirk up slightly, almost as if he is gearing up for a smile, but it’s quickly replaced by the look of worry–

–and Cutler’s bike jumps over the rut in the road and cuts in front of Hal’s. The wheels rattle and screech. Cutler attempts to brake – and yep, his is definitely the wrong bike. It is driven across the grass dangerously close to the harbour where it finally comes to an abrupt stop upon running into a boulder. Cutler tumbles out of the saddle and rolls down the rugged slope and narrowly avoids falling into the water. He ends up lying on the ground, his chest heaving with each painful breath. This is not how he envisioned his death.

Hal comes closer and asks the number one stupid film question:

“Are you all right?”

Does he _look_ all right?

“I think I could play percussion with the fragments of my ribs,” Cutler croaks. 

Hal lowers himself on the edge of the harbour side.

“I take it I’ve won.”

The nerve!

“It was an accident,” Cutler says adamantly. “It doesn’t count.”

He struggles to sit and gives up on the idea quickly. The ache in his body fires up a fresh surge of hunger. He moves, and whimpers because everything fucking _hurts_.

“How can you stand it?” he whispers. “Mouth like sandpaper. This feeling that something is clawing at your gut.” Nausea makes his head spin. “Why would anyone inflict this on themselves voluntarily?”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Hal says dryly.

That’s true, but Cutler doesn’t want to get kicked off the goody-goody team. Time and again he asks himself if he’s gone completely bonkers. Surely it is much safer at Mr Snow’s side. What’s a little humiliation to put up with in the grand scheme of things? He’s used to all the humiliation he can take.

“Are you really doing this out of some weird respect for humanity or is there another reason?”

Hal keeps silent. Maybe he is like one of those old computers; it takes him ages to load one programme. Or maybe he’s choosing another lie from a catalogue.

“That touching pitch about this being their world and not ours.” Cutler scoffs. “All very nice, but it’s bullshit.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah! We’ve got as much right to be here as anyone else. I mean, look at Tom. Look at what he turns into every month. Yet you view him as a victim. You don’t deny him his place in this beloved world of yours even though he’s a part-time monster.”

“Tom has got no choice,” Hal says in the voice of someone who is forced to go over the same drivel over and over again. If anything, it’s Cutler who should sound like that because he just can’t wrap his mind around Hal’s new philosophy. “He can’t stop changing. We can. The only thing he can do is take precautions, which he does.”

“Some of us didn’t have a choice either!” Cutler snaps. “Like maybe their makers forgot to ask them.”

Hal gets up. This is what the new Hal is all about: running away. Cutler forces himself up on his feet and hobbles after him.

“Hal. Hal!”

“Come on,” Hal says after a pause, picking up his bicycle. “Let’s see who wins the race after all.”

Cutler wrinkles his forehead in surprise. This… Yeah, okay, he can work with this.

* * *

The sandwiches in the kitchen have been replaced with bomb parts. Tom should open his own workshop.

The owners of the cottage are nowhere to be found, much to Cutler’s relief, while the gang is gathered around Tom, discussing the possible plan of action. According to Annie, the world is only days away from the impending disaster. That’s bloody comforting.

Cutler’s ribs hurt like a bitch. Hal has naturally claimed the victory in the race after all. Cutler has no idea what it means for him now. With Lord Hal, he never knew what to expect either, only that it would be brutal and imaginative. 

He barely listens to the conversation. What’s the point? Mr Snow has most likely already left Barry Island; they’ve got no idea where to look for him, and even if they did, one does not simply walk into Mordor.

“Maybe we could get Yvonne to touch him and see what happens,” Cutler mutters. It is not until everyone is staring at him that he realizes he has said it out loud.

Annie cracks up first. She covers her mouth with her hand and her shoulders begin to shake. Alex follows suit, joined promptly by Tom. Hal’s lips tremble. He is trying very hard, but he too is eventually caught up in the flow.

They are laughing at his joke.

Cutler blinks, smiles uncertainly. Somebody print-screen this moment.

“Is it too much to hope that he’ll grow a heart like the Grinch and we’ll all live happily ever after?” Alex supplies.

Hal buries his face in his hands. He’s known the man in question the longest; imagining those deranged scenarios must hurt.

“On a more serious note,” Cutler says, inspired by his latest success, “what if Tom bleeds into his mouth like George did with Griffin? That would kill him, wouldn’t it?”

It sure did kill Griffin, but who knows if Count Zombacula dies like your average vampire.

“George was half-changed by then, weren’t he?” Tom counters. “I can’t manage that. And we’d have to get real close to him–.”

A light bulb explodes over Cutler’s head. 

“You were there when George died,” says Annie in a steely voice.

The room goes eerily quiet. Cutler gulps down nervously.

“I–.” He trails off.

“Well?”

“You knew I was working with Griffin!” he fires off defensively. Why is she making such a big deal out of this now?

Annie rent-a-ghosts up to him, her eyes cold and frightening.

“Were you there when they killed Nina too?”

“No!”

“Were you there when he ordered to have her killed?”

Cutler desperately tries to remember. They discussed Nina’s death when the whole werewolf baby hell was let loose, but when the hit had been ordered, Cutler had most likely been stuck making Griffin’s tea.

“No,” he says quietly, not entirely certain. In all honesty, he just wouldn’t remember something so loosely related to his plans. 

His view narrows down to Annie’s dark eyes. An acute awareness hits him: if she decides to stake him now, nobody will lift a finger to stop her. 

She turns away and returns to the table. Cutler breathes out shakily. There are knives in the kitchen and forks – and who knows, maybe Annie is an Alan Rickman fan and can use spoons creatively too. Cutler makes a hasty escape into the guest bedroom.

His hands are trembling. He is a ninety-year-old vampire and he is afraid of a dead girl. Brilliant.

The radio buzzes, filling the room with white noise. Cutler turns it off absent-mindedly. 

Why did she blow a fuse like that? A hell of a lot of people must have been there when her precious George kicked it. Even Regus apparently. But no, of course they have to jump all over Cutler because he is the resident punching bag, it seems. Your friend died? Blame Cutler. Your toaster broke down? Oh, Cutler must have tampered with it!

The noise grows louder. Cutler fiddles with the radio irritably. The hell is wrong with it? Didn’t he just–?

“Nick…”

His hand drops. The voice comes faintly through the buzzing, and keeps repeating his name.

“Nick…”

Cutler edges away from the radio. It’s a glitch; it must be. Somebody is calling him, over and over again, a woman, and her voice seems vaguely familiar. He can’t really tell through the noise waves.

The voice grows louder, more insistent. Cutler’s chest tightens.

“Nick!”

He whispers past the lump in his throat: 

“Rachel?”


	5. Our Emotional Baggage

“Nick.” He thinks he can hear her laughing, but the sound is distorted. “I finally found you.”

“Rachel, I–.”

Cutler falters. How does one usually greet the wife who was horribly murdered and is calling from the afterlife over half a century later? He shoves his hand into his pocket, clutching his mobile phone, half-intent on Googling it.

“I know,” she whispers. That is her intonation. He recognises it. She sounded like that when things went wrong at work and he would come home ranting and forget to compliment the dinner she had made and generally act like an obnoxious fool. She was always so patient. “You’ve done so many terrible things. But it doesn’t matter now. Soon, nothing will matter anymore.”

He blinks rapidly. Maybe there are tears in his eyes. Maybe that’s just water. Maybe she’s not even real. Some vampires hallucinate when they go dry. Perhaps he’s finally losing it.

“What do you mean?”

“The world is ending, Nick.”

Not her too! Why is everyone so hung up on this?

“No need to exaggerate,” Cutler says, feigning nonchalance. He is pretty sure his heart isn’t supposed to beat that fast. “It’s just a little vampire invasion.”

“Nobody’s going to like that world, Nick,” says Rachel. “Not even the vampires.” 

White noise grows louder, and for a moment, he is afraid to lose her again. He holds his hand out to the radio as if to stop her from leaving.

“You can stop it,” she says. “You can be a history maker like you were always meant to be. You can put things right.”

He takes a deep breath. Hello, insanity. If she says he is somebody’s only hope– He’s quite sure the diploma in his office doesn’t say “Obi-Wan Kenobi”.

Despite the absurdity of the situation, Cutler latches on to the familiar incentive. Be a hero. Be a history maker. 

“What do I have to do?”

“You know. You’ve thought about it. You’ve voiced it, but no one listens.”

His eyes widen. 

“The War Child.” He shakes his head, beginning to sober up. “No, if I do that, they…” He trails off, and starts again: “We’ve got a better plan.”

A hint of impatience creeps into Rachel’s voice.

“This is the only plan, Nick! The War Child saves humanity by dying. They know that. They are just blinded by their love for her. You’ve got no such reservations. You see things clearly, don’t you? Do what must be done.”

“Okay, first of all, stop talking like the bloody Oracle!” snaps Cutler. This is the new level of mental. Not to mention really unnerving, coming from his dead wife. “Look, I’d love to help, but… Shall we say, my plans tend to go to the dogs a bit too often these days. Besides, I’m trying to stay on the straight and narrow, and Hal–.”

The noise waves flare up. The radio crackles like it’s about to explode. Rachel’s voice comes through, edged with steel.

“How many times do I have to watch you choose him over me? You have betrayed my memory, Nick. You’ve betrayed it so many times.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. The sound grows louder. She keeps talking but he can’t make out the words. Anxiety sweeps over him, and turns into genuine fear. He feels as helpless as he felt when Hal showed him just whose blood he had drunk. “I’m sorry!” he shouts. It’s futile. He can no more apologise for this than Hal can. No person in their right mind would accept an apology for something so monstrous. “I’m so sorry, Rachel.” 

The buzzing subsides. The radio goes completely quiet for a long-drawn-out moment. Has she gone? Has she given up on him? 

No, she hasn’t.

“I know you are, Nick,” she says, her tone gentle again. He wishes he could see her, but then, she would see him too, and he isn’t sure he can handle that. 

Cutler rubs his eyes furiously. His eyelashes are wet.

“I didn’t choose him over you,” he says with conviction. He didn’t, did he? It wasn’t a choice. At least not the first dozen times around. She has met him. Hal. She smiled at him, for fuck’s sake! She found him charming; that’s what she said. 

“It’s not important now,” Rachel tells him. “Get rid of the baby and put an end to this madness. Everything will be all right then. I promise.”

He wants to scream. It is not her promise to make! Can’t she see it?

“You’re not Rachel,” he mutters. He doesn’t know what to believe, but there is a nagging doubt at the back of his mind. “Rachel would never ask me to hurt a baby. She was kind. She wanted children.”

“Sixty years in Purgatory, Nick!” she snaps. “Stuck between the worlds to pay for your sins. Yours and those of your precious Hal. How much kindness do you think I’ve got left in me?”

He stares at the radio, dumbfounded. No, that’s impossible. The afterlife doesn’t work that way. She passed over, she should be at peace!

Cutler’s lips tremble. He tries to tell her about the plan to eliminate Mr Snow they’re hatching up. He speaks of himself like he is a full-blown team member, like there is a bloody team. 

“Mr Snow doesn’t matter,” Rachel says, sending him into a fresh bout of panic. How could he not matter? He’s the Final Boss, the Biggest Bad, the arrogant scumbag who didn’t like Cutler’s plan! “Whether you like it or not,” Rachel continues, “the War Child’s death is the only way to end this. Do you honestly believe Mr Snow’s shoes are too big to fill? If he falls, someone else will rise. It could even be Hal.”

Cutler’s memory supplies the words: _I’ve seen what he becomes in this future_. Annie’s words. Does that mean Hal becomes the new Mr Snow?

Cutler straightens his back.

“I’m sorry. I can’t. Not even for you.”

“You owe me, Nick!” she shouts. There is nothing of the Rachel he knew in her now, tenderness and patience stripped away to expose fiery rage. “Don’t turn your back on me! Not after what you did. Not after what you’ve been doing all this time!”

A bizarre sense of déjà vu hits him. He remembers standing in his garage and telling Hal that he cannot kill his wife. He felt so terrified: of Hal, of himself, of the future. 

And now he’s having a similar conversation with her – and he is once again saying no.

The transmission is cut off mid-word. Cutler blinks away the tears and turns to the door. It’s open; Tom is looking at him from the corridor.

“Who’re you talkin’ to?”

Cutler’s brain shuts down before he can come up with a coherent answer.

“Er… myself.” He smiles. “You all hate me so much that I figured I’d join the club and give myself a piece of mind.”

Tom raises his eyebrows but luckily doesn’t say anything. Cutler trots after him, unwilling to stay tête-à-tête with the infernal transmitter. His heart is doing a Michael Jackson against his ribs.

He never liked ghost stories.

* * *

The war council is still in session. Cutler cannot help noticing that Hal is leaning against the wall far away from Annie who occasionally casts dark glances at him. Has he missed something important?

“I get why I’m scared of her,” he whispers to Hal. “Why are you?”

“I’m not scared,” Hal replies tersely. “I’m giving her space.”

Admittedly, the kitchen is a bit challenged in that respect. Cutler snorts. If that makes Hal feel better, fine, he’s not scared. 

“I was wondering if maybe you could put in a good word for me. If we all have to work together, I’d rather not deal with her eternal PMT.”

As soon as he says it, he realises the phrasing might be a bit incorrect. Or very incorrect because Hal is glowering at him like he’s just defended Hitler in an argument with a Holocaust survivor.

“Given the nature of our relationship, I sincerely doubt my word would count for anything.”

Cutler is about to ask what the nature of Hal’s relationship with Annie is when it hits him. Oh, he means _their_ relationship! The relationship between Hal and Cutler. Cutler didn’t even know they still had a relationship, much less of any particular nature. 

The other Power Rangers, joined by Adam and Yvonne, continue arguing about the plan of action, and someone finally brings up a valid argument: they have got no clue as to Mr Snow’s whereabouts. It’s pretty clear he won’t be stuck in Barry forever; hell, he must have left already. Which brings them back to square minus one. Oh well, you can never have too many homemade explosives. Cutler is sure Tom will find some domestic use for them. And maybe the world, which, according to Rachel, nobody is going to like, won’t even catch up with them. At least not straight away.

Tom is relating some unimaginably complicated ideas of tracking vampires rooted in his hunting days when Annie suddenly exclaims:

“The Prime Minister!” Everyone looks at her like she’s lost it. She throws her hands up. “Eve told me that in the future the full-blown panic started when the vampires killed the Prime Minister on national television. She said we were only days away. This is where Snow is going to be.”

“He’s gonna eat the PM on telly?” Cutler repeats, dumbstruck. That’s actually… not such a bad idea. He snorts. “What’s next? Summoning Satan?”

Hal mutters, looking strangely uncomfortable:

“I wouldn’t worry about that…”

“So,” Tom interrupts, “London then?”

Oh yes, that narrows it down.

“You’re not seriously suggesting we loaf about a big city, loaded with bombs and stakes and whatnot!” Cutler says. “The last thing we need is to be mistaken for terrorists.”

“I hate to say it, but Cutler’s right,” Alex supplies. The sky must be falling. “If we knew the exact location, Annie and I could rent-a-ghost in and do our thing. But we can’t risk you getting arrested or anything. Anyway, what _can_ we do? Blow up the BBC? That’d still get a hell of a lot of innocent people killed.”

And a hell of a lot of good shows put on hold.

“Considering the shit they’ve been up to lately, I wouldn’t say they were that innocent,” Adam mutters. Yvonne gives him The Look.

Cutler looks back at Hal. Hal’s face is a stony mask, save for the panic in his eyes. 

“Seeing as we got no choice, someone will have to contact them local vampires and find out what’s what,” Tom says.

Hal goes a few shades paler. Cutler always thought it was only possible in cartoons. The problem is that both of them would most likely be staked on sight (or at least Cutler would be; Hal would probably be chained up in the basement until all the good was out of his system).

Adam cuts in:

“Fine, scaredy-cats, lucky the A-dog is here to save the day. I’ll gatecrash some vampire mixer and ask around.” 

Cutler is all right with that, but the others seem to be apprehensive. Alex fails to contain a snort.

“Oi, I’ve got tons of investigating experience,” Adam bristles up. “I’ll have you know I solved a murder once. Can you say the same for yourself?”

Alex glanced at Cutler. “I didn’t have to.”

If Cutler were brought up on charges for her murder now, he would most definitely plead insanity. Never mind that it’s the result of talking to her _after_ she’s kicked it.

Little by little, the outline of the plan is becoming clear. They will leave the War Child here with Yvonne and set out for London as soon as their arsenal is ready. Adam will go ahead to collect information on Snow. Depending on his whereabouts, they will then attempt to repeat the fireworks at Stoker’s, hopefully without making a ragout out of the Prime Minister in the process. All that sounds a bit dangerous and a lot mental but nobody seems to mind.

Except Hal.

“Tom, I can’t go,” he whispers when the meeting is adjourned. “You know that.”

Cutler searches for something to fix his eyes on to make it look like he is not eavesdropping, but they aren’t pay attention to him anyway.

Tom squeezes Hal’s shoulder.

“C’mon, mate, I got your back, remember?”

Hal breathes out shakily.

“All I’ve been thinking about for the past few days is blood.”

“Try thinking ‘bout something else. Yvonne’s cooking is smashing.”

The sound Hal makes is a mutant cross between a chuckle and a sob. 

“I won’t let you leap at people,” Tom says resolutely. “You can babble though.”

Another sob/chuckle hybrid follows. This must be an in-joke. Cutler hates it that they share in-jokes. He doesn’t hate Tom himself, doesn’t even hate it that Tom encourages Hal’s rehab madness, but these exchanges are more than he can bear. He attempts to slink off before he grinds his teeth into powder expressing his disgruntlement, but the kitchen has become a Tom-free zone somewhere between the ten-point earthquake of inexplicable anger and the tsunami of illogical jealousy inside Cutler. Hal easily projects his existential angst on the nearest semi-breathing object, which happens to be Cutler.

“I can’t go to London,” he says, a touch of hysteria in his voice. The broken record syndrome is apparently a thing in this household.

“Sure you can,” Cutler says dismissively. “You heard Tom. He’s got you. You’re gonna be like Butch and Sundance.”

If Cutler had enough time, he could make a proper joke out of this material: Tom is the dog, but Hal is the one who has to be kept on a leash. This is golden.

“I can barely contain myself here!” Hal snaps. “Can you imagine me in a big city with millions of people? Crowds, traffic, all that noise and chaos.”

“Maybe it’s just what you need. To find something to focus on. In our case, it’s getting Snow. You just won’t have time to think about anything else.”

This is what he is counting on in his case because – dammit, this wagon thing is becoming unbearable.

“I can’t _face_ Snow!” Hal all but yells. The intensity of his outburst takes Cutler by surprise. Hal is sweating and shaking, and for once it’s not just about blood.

“He’s not that scary,” Cutler says cautiously. “I’ve met him, remember? He should just get his teeth bleached and perhaps think of using some skincare product.”

Hal grips the front of Cutler’s shirt. “Do you think I’m joking?” 

“No,” Cutler says, meeting his eyes. “But I am. You may laugh.”

Hal doesn’t. The look on his face is enough to kill any mood except the downright apocalyptic one. Sarcasm and silly film references have been Cutler’s defense mechanism since before he can remember, but he suspects that he should stop hiding for once.

It strikes him that he has never seen Hal genuinely scared before. Hal’s eyes are feverishly bright and red-rimmed, his breath hot on Cutler’s face. It’s not that Cutler isn’t afraid of Snow. He can joke all he likes; Snow is quite terrifying up close. But Cutler is used to being afraid. He was afraid of Hal for five years; deep down, he still is. Hal, Cutler suspects, has never been afraid of anything but himself and Mr Snow. 

Cutler touches Hal’s shoulder tentatively. Tension makes Hal’s muscles rigid; it feels like touching a statue. Or a Twilight vampire.

“Whatever power you think he’s got over you–” He doesn’t need to finish the sentence to realise that it’s not going to work. He tries again, softer. “Hal. You’d never let anyone control you.”

Hal whispers: “I may not have a choice.”

Maybe it’s the tone of voice; maybe the phrasing. Cutler pulls away and throws up his hands.

“Fuck that! You always have a choice. Everyone has a choice. _I_ have a choice!”

“That’s not what you said before.”

Cutler all but gapes at him. It’s a poor substitute for a mirror, but Cutler needs to see his own astonishment reflected somewhere. Please do not disturb: epiphany in progress.

“I do,” he says, and then: “I did. Maybe not the first time around, but afterwards I always did. With Rachel, too.”

He shouldn’t have lied to Rachel earlier today, but then, he didn’t really understand, not until he heard her voice again, not until she threw those fair accusations in his face. 

“I still killed her,” Hal says softly.

Yes, Cutler thinks, habitual anger stirring within him, yes, you did.

“But I chose not to. And afterwards, I chose to stay with you. Everything I did, everything I’m doing now is my choice. I kept telling myself that you wouldn’t have had it any other way.” His lips twist into an almost painful smile. Revelations can be as damnific as they can be cathartic. “But that’s not true, is it? If I wanted to make a different choice… well, there’s plenty of wood around.”

Something changes in Hal’s face. He closes off, collects himself; Cutler can practically see all the unintentionally released emotions seeping back into him. He mutters something about needing air, and Cutler doesn’t stop him – because he’s not Tom and he can only give so many fucks about someone who doesn’t give a damn about him.

(Speaking of Yvonne’s cooking: now would be a good time.)

“Nick!”

Cutler starts. Not again!

“You can’t let them leave the baby here,” Rachel admonishes. Cutler looks around and spots a radio set on the counter. How many radio sets do these people have? Rachel’s voice sounds hissy through the background noise. “She’s not safe here.”

Cutler snorts. “I thought you wanted her dead.”

“Quickly and painlessly! Not taken by Mr Snow’s men for God knows what purposes.”

Cutler is itching for some good old appliance defenestration.

“At the very least they’ve got no idea she’s here,” he says. “I’d be surprised if they had any idea what _here_ was.”

There is a pregnant pause, and Cutler is almost sure that she curses his lack of cooperation in her mind. It would be much easier if he could see her. If she could see him.

“Nick,” Rachel says cautiously. “If they discover her whereabouts, the world will to go to hell.” The sizzling noises at the background make “hell” sound like “Hal”, which, from what Cutler understands, is pretty close to the truth. “Can you really let this happen?”

She wasn’t such a nag when she was alive. He sighs. Fine, he’ll tell them. Not that they would listen.

* * *

Much to his surprise, they do. Annie admits that she feels uncomfortable leaving Eve behind. Yvonne heroically declares that she will then join the group because she cannot have Adam– Actually, Cutler doesn’t know what she cannot have Adam doing because he doesn’t really listen. His mission is accomplished, and he realizes, with a strange, sinking feeling, that he doesn’t want to stay alone in case Rachel tries to contact him again. For all that he has genuinely missed her, he never believed he would hear her voice again. Now that he did, he wants that to have never happened.

He goes outside where the sky is a smoky, dark shade of an indefinite colour. He recalls a photograph he may have seen on some travel website. A beach somewhere in the Bahamas or the Maldives or wherever, the sky bejeweled with stars, waves rolling over the sandy shores. The waves were bright blue, strewn with specks of surreal light that, if Cutler remembers correctly, came from the abundance of some kind of luminescent plankton that reacted with oxygen and illuminated the water. It was a simple picture, something that could easily be Photoshopped even if one didn’t possess complex graphic skills. Thinking back to it now, Cutler realises that it was the last thing he thought of as beautiful. He is not the sentimental type. He doesn’t cling to snapshots of the past. Everybody keeps telling him the world is going to hell in a handcart, but he is not feeling it. Perhaps he should.

His solitude is short-lived. Three quarters of the core four pour out of the house and disperse over the lawn. Cutler wishes he smoked so that he could try and drive them away by exhaling smoke in their faces (never mind that it would only disturb Tom). 

“Hal looked jittery,” Alex observes. “It’s really bad, isn’t it? The blood thing?”

“Could be worse,” Annie comments distantly. “He could be massacring dozens of innocent people on a train. Or he could be recruiting.”

The latter lights a big neon sign spelling out FUCK NO! in Cutler’s head.

“Maybe he’s right,” says Alex. “Maybe he should sit this one out.”

“I ain’t leavin’ him here unsupervised,” Tom protests. “I promised to help him. To be the new Leo.”

“Tom, you can’t always keep an eye on him,” says Annie. “Trust me, it doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, please,” Cutler mutters. He should really do something about that chatty tongue of his. “Just because your vampire flew off the handle and had to be put down, it doesn’t mean–.”

He falls silent as Annie turns to glare at him. He expects the next round of Cutlerball to start in three… two… one. 

“Where is Hal anyway?” Tom asks, drawing everyone’s attention to Hal’s rather conspicuous absence.

Cutler frowns. Was it dark already when Hal left or has he been out for hours without anybody having noticed? Where would he go on an island this small?

Cutler plays back the last conversation he had with Hal – and another ill-timed epiphany strikes him.

“Uh-oh.”

Alex narrows her eyes. “What?”

Cutler murmurs past the lump in his throat:

“I think I may have told Hal to go stake himself.” 

* * *

Commercial break: From the producers who saw too many second-rate action flicks, comes the new epic adventure, a high-octane modern day remake of the sequel spin-off to the triquel of the sixteenth century saga _Dark Hal Rising – It’s Cutler Time!_ It slices and dices and snarks like a boss.

Starring: Nick Cutler as his very own fantastic self; Hal Yorke, Tom McNair and Annie the Creepyfying Ghost as the Token Trio; Alex Best-Served-Cold as the Ghost Avenger; Adam Jacobs and Yvonne Bradshaw as the Redshirts; Eve “Antichrist” Sands as the ticking time-bomb; and Mr Snow as the Nightmare Fuel. 

Music composed by the paranoid authors of the drumbeat from series three of _Doctor Who_.

Cinematography by random camera phone owners (vampires inserted via The Sims simulations).

Written and directed by [no idea who but if Cutler finds them, they’re goners].

Reviewers have described this smart, sexy and riveting adventure as “smart, sexy and riveting… until it’s not, not anymore.” 

Coming to a cinema near you. Dangerously near.

* * *

Strained silence is one of the things Cutler hates, on par with running and songs that begin with a countdown. 

Hal is strapped to a chair – and if Cutler knew what this _rehab_ thing entailed, he would have pushed Hal on the wagon a long time ago.

The smell of blood is faint, but it tickles Cutler’s nostrils nonetheless, making the hunger swell and burn. He leans into Hal, resting his hands on Hal’s lap for purchase, and takes a deep breath. The blood is still in Hal’s mouth. Cutler’s lips hover over Hal’s. Tom could have at least made him brush his teeth before tying him up.

“What are you doing?” Hal whispers.

“What do you think I’m doing?” 

“Don’t.”

Cutler snickers. It sounds like a dialogue from a trashy melodrama.

“I’m going to regret this,” Cutler says. He wants to nudge Hal’s mouth open with his tongue and suck the blood out. It may even be Hal’s blood. Cutler doesn’t care. That old, familiar feeling of need nests within him, making his teeth ache.

“I didn’t attack anyone,” Hal says rapidly. “It was dark. She came out of nowhere. She bumped into me, and I, I snarled at her. And she saw my face. She started running and fell and hit her head. I didn’t drink, I just… I touched the wound and licked some blood off my fingers.”

Which was when Tom and the others found him. Cutler nods.

“I know. This is why you’re still going to London.”

“I told you!” Hal’s voice comes out high-pitched and hysterical. “I can’t!”

Cutler pulls away. It hurts on an almost physical level. Just a few drops of blood – but Cutler feels them in his famished state all the more acutely.

“Your mental stability is the last thing I care about,” he says. “But I really do think that taking out Mr Snow – and saving that blasted baby – would be good for you. In the long run. And what’s good for you is… apparently… good for the world.” Another apocalyptic omen right there. 

Hal’s eyes bore into Cutler’s back as he looks away from the chair, trying to collect his thoughts. He is usually quite good at motivational speeches, but they are frequently addressed to himself and ripped off of Hal’s spiel from the fifties.

“Looks like I’m taking this whole going dry thing a bit better than you. I guess my lack of appreciation for brutal and creative killings has finally come in handy.” Cutler grins; Hal predictably doesn’t. “What I’m trying to say is… You’ve got this huge support network. Take it from someone who’s got the first-hand experience in disappointing people: you don’t want to let them down.”

He doesn’t wait for Hal to answer. If he spends one more minute in this room, he will vomit. The pull of hunger is too strong. He goes down to the kitchen, feeling like a sleepwalker in the empty, dark cottage. The radio keeps silent as he puts the kettle to boil. He imagines Rachel, the new, hard and pitiless Rachel, laughing at him. Maybe she was always like that; maybe he just never noticed.

He makes tea and takes it to Hal. He can be nice and considerate if he tries.

“Why did Tom and the others think I was going to kill myself?” Hal asks.

“Oh, er… I might have said something.”

Hal arches his eyebrows. His expression could almost be described as amused.

“If I wanted to kill myself over _words_ , I would have died a long time ago. Possibly as a human.”

Cutler grunts noncommittally and pushes the rim of the mug between Hal’s lips before Hal can protest. He watches Hal’s throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows, and waits for a disparaging comment or perhaps a remark that Annie’s is better (which is bullshit because Cutler has made so many cups of tea for bloody Griffin that if you poured their contents into a cistern, you could swim in it).

Hal keeps silent.

Cutler wants to sink his teeth into Hal’s throat. Blood maps itself out in the bluish cords of veins under his skin. 

“Tell me about Leo,” Cutler says.

Hal’s eyes are dark, almost black in the soft semi-darkness of the room, but not vampire black. He looks sick, emaciated, like a radiation victim. They haven’t got much time, and Cutler doesn’t know how Leo went about these things or how Tom does or how one is generally supposed to detox a vampire (especially if one suffers from the same condition), but it’s either this or the death of Twitter and every other aspect of civilization. Cutler would only agree to have the Old Ones rule the world if they took his counsel into account. 

“Talk to me,” he prods, and strangely, Hal does.

* * *

Hal shouts and pleads and threatens, from dusk till dawn and then some. At first his outbursts seem to disturb Yvonne but eventually strange linguistic enthusiasm grips her and she sets out to document his antiquated obscenities. Adam is gone within a week. Tom obsessively plans for anything and everything. Annie is barely seen at all. Alex – Alex who? As for Cutler, he tries to stay away from the radio and imagines all the boring bits as a montage set to some wacky sentimental music. Possibly _Sugar, Sugar_. 

Alex asks him why he’s not cursing or yelling like Hal. It’s obvious that they all suspect he secretly drinks blood. He doesn’t try to dissuade them.

Fast-forward: London. April. 5.5 hours of sunshine daily. Lots of traffic and healthy blood circulation. Cutler used to live here what feels like ages ago.

Predictably they argue over where to stay. Tom is all for breaking into some warehouse or perhaps nesting under the bridge, as long as they are out of sight. Hal lectures him on the importance of having four walls around him, otherwise “I shall not be responsible for my actions!” Annie supports him (for Eve’s sake, presumably) and tasks Yvonne with finding suitable premises. 

The bickering continues. Cutler does the only sensible thing there is to do: he escapes. He finds a mini-market on the corner of the street and sneaks inside. He thinks of getting Hal a bag of M&M’s, a little coloured chaos to soothe his anxiety. Anxious Hal equals snappy, irritable and occasionally hysterical Hal, and Cutler is honestly fed up with his mood swings.

The abundance of colourful labels hurts his eyes. A dull, pulsing ache spreads through his fangs. Saliva in his mouth has an acute metallic tang to it. He flexes his fingers. He’s better at this than Hal. This is the one thing he is better at, and that’s about the only reason he continues this charade.

He gathers various packs without really looking at the labels. Waffles, crisps, caramel. Perhaps he should get toffees, something really sticky; it would stick to Hal’s teeth, and he won’t be able to bite anyone. Or talk.

“How does a staunch opponent of the werewolves go from trying to warn the world about the danger that they pose to working with one of them practically overnight?”

Cutler nearly drops his acquisitions. He turns around and looks over a rather unremarkable man in a grey suit who gives him a polite smile.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Dominic Rook. I represent the Department of the Domestic Defense. My job is to maintain the illusion that man is alone and to safeguard him against supernatural calamities.”

“Looks like you’re not doing very well then.” He connects the dots and exclaims: “You took down my videos! And my Twitter account!”

He doesn’t expect an explanation, but he finds Rook’s simple, one-word answer a little infuriating nonetheless.

“Yes.”

Cutler instinctively takes a step back. It makes sense that they might want to take him into custody or just plain stake him. How come Hal never told him the bloody government knew about supernaturals? How come guys like Fergus were needed if the government could just clean up after the vampires any time?

“The world is on the verge of a great change,” says Rook, sounding like an expert salesman. “Regardless of the outcome, it will never be quite the same as it used to be. In light of that, we have decided that the vampires would be better off under new management. We would like you to be the liaison between our world and the vampire world–.”

The speech reminds Cutler of the history-making bullshit he likes to repeat after Hal.

Wait a minute.

“You want me to… what, rule the vampires? All over the world?”

“Let us not get too far ahead.”

This is mental if he does say so himself.

“On the contrary,” says Rook. “We know that the Old Ones are planning a takeover. And we know that you are now part of the group that is working to prevent the expansion of your race. We fully support this endeavour. With someone like you at the helm, someone modern and imaginative, your race could progress beyond the base, animalistic urges that govern it.”

It does sound attractive. Certainly more attractive than Snow’s crude catapults and battering rams. 

“Perhaps at first you might require a figurehead. Someone more traditional, more renowned.” He means Hal, doesn’t he? Cutler snorts at the idea. “But in time, I’m sure, you will come into your own.”

Rook concludes the speech with an extremely fake cheery smile. It makes Cutler’s skin crawl. He’s never seen a less human-like human.

“In return,” Rook adds, seeing Cutler’s hesitation, “we shall provide you with premises, funding, assistance and means to acquire blood consensually.”

Damn, the bastard really knows his strategies of negotiation.

“You don’t have to answer immediately. But we are aware that your group is in need of accommodation.” He holds out a small note with an address and a phone number scribbled on it. “This might suit your needs. Give me a ring when you make up your mind.”

Another fake smile. If there was a Grand Prix for this, the guy would win it.

“Why don’t you just stop the Old Ones yourself if you know what they’re planning?” Cutler asks – because, hell, anyone stands a better chance than their ragtag Fellowship of Arson, Murder and Lifesaving.

Rook looks at him like he has just asked why frogs don’t fly.

“Bureaucracy, Mr Cutler. If we go via official channels, I’m afraid it will take quite a while.” It cannot possibly sound any fishier. “But I wish you the best of luck.”

* * *

“No bloody way!” Tom says resolutely. “I ain’t getting locked up nowhere so they could experiment on us or something. They could even be the same people that did that to George and Nina!”

He looks to Annie for approval. She nods vaguely, rocking Eve in her arms, as if she hasn’t really given thought to it. She has been strangely distant lately.

Cutler has no idea what was done to George and Nina, but he is pretty sure Rook isn’t planning to experiment on them.

“We can’t stay in the car or in a ditch somewhere,” he reasons. “And it’s not a very good idea to check into a hotel with… you know, _bombs_ in our luggage.”

Tom grudgingly agrees to inspect the place. They drive to check out the address and end up in front of an old, gloomy-looking house that may or may not be abandoned. 

“We don’t have a key anyway,” Tom mutters, “so let’s go.”

Cutler twiddles Rook’s note in his hand. There is a combination of numbers that is obviously a key code, but before he can punch it in, Alex disappears; a moment later the door opens from the other side. Alex grins and waves them inside.

The house is gloomy but clean and orderly. Cutler instantly dubs it Grimmauld Place. Hal traditionally doesn’t get the joke. Alex snickers, and the others ignore him.

“Is that a camera?” Tom asks, glaring suspiciously at the ceiling where a small rectangular object is positioned. Tom moves aside; the box buzzes and turns slowly in the same direction. Motion sensors. How cool is that?

“Maybe they’re filming a reality show,” Alex suggests.

“Starring ghosts and vampires?” Hal says sceptically.

“Or a floating baby,” Cutler notes.

Annie starts, and moves out of the camera range.

“Do they know about Eve?” she asks.

Cutler doesn’t think so. At least Rook hasn’t mentioned anything, but then again, the War Child is more or less irrelevant to his proposal.

“If we’re gonna stay here, we need to get rid of ‘em,” Tom says.

It’s a bit like a scavenger hunt. Cutler is sure the house is bugged too, and there are probably more hidden cameras than the ones they can see, but he enjoys disconnecting them as they explore the place inch by inch. Hal notices his grin and cocks his eyebrows curiously.

“Defense mechanism?”

“No, this is me actually having fun!”

Hal’s surprised face looks very amusing and somehow makes him look less… Hal-like.

“Why?”

Cutler stops containing his childish excitement.

“What do you mean why? Look at this place! It’s like a James Bond film but with a crappy low budget. I wonder if there’s a panic room. Or a secret torture dungeon.” Hal cringes. “Come on, everybody loves a dungeon!” Cutler winks slyly. “I know you did.”

Alex pops out of nowhere right by his side. Not for the first time Cutler is glad that he can’t have a heart attack.

“It’s them!” Alex declares with the utmost certainty. The two vampires give her blank looks. She shakes her head impatiently. “They’ve got my body. You said they cleaned up after weird murders. How much weirder could my murder get?” She clamps her hand on Cutler’s shoulder companionably. “You’re gonna ask them about it.”

Cutler goggles at her.

“No way! No! I can’t contact them before I have an answer–!”

Alex sniggers. “What, you as the… head vampire in charge? Seriously?”

Cutler puffs up his chest. “Why not?”

He makes the mistake of looking at Hal then. Hal’s face reflects an insulting combination of outrage, not unlike the expression he wore when Cutler outlined his idea of the exposure of werewolves to him, and mockery. He can take this from her: she doesn’t know him, she wasn’t the one who tried to fashion him into a history maker. But not from Hal. Hal has lost the right to laugh at him.

Cutler clenches his teeth and says nothing, but he files it away for later.

* * *

Cutler texts Yvonne and Adam the location of the house and the key code combination. He thinks of starting a new Twitter account but it’s not like he can liveblog saving the world.

Tom declares they should track down Milo and separate him from Snow, which is easier said than done, at least until Adam gets them Snow’s location. Tom and his “team”, that is Hal and Alex, leave in the evening, evidently to nick some more junk for Tom’s arsenal. Cutler is very explicitly told to stay put (apparently it’s easier to trust a bipolar five-hundred-year-old megalomaniac whom they have dragged here against his will than someone who maintains the most basic control over his urges). Annie refuses to leave Eve until Yvonne comes to play babysitter – and nobody cares that leaving Cutler alone with the all-powerful woman who hates his guts might not be the best idea.

Fortunately, Grimmauld Place has a lot of rooms, the doors to all of them lockable. Cutler turns the key, leans against the door – and realises that fat load of good it will do him. Annie can rent-a-ghost.

He growls and slides down on the floor. In a single moment of anger, he slams his fists against the floor and spits in a choked voice: “Fuck!”

This is so not what he wanted. He was supposed to be rich, living in Brazil, driving fast cars and walking barefooted in the sand. There would be easy women and blood in abundance. There would be some kind of fucking freedom at last!

But hey, since when does Nick Cutler get what he wants, be it wealth or recognition or even a break? That would be too fucking trouble-free, wouldn’t it? 

The television screen flickers to life. Cutler can’t see anything but a vaguely outlined shadow. He can’t decide if it’s comforting or disturbing.

She calls his name. He doesn’t move but he finds himself wishing she were here, even as a ghost, so that he could feel her, just for a little while. But because he is a moron who doesn’t know when to stop, he snaps at her:

“Come to gloat at my misery?”

“I’m on your side, Nick,” Rachel says. She doesn’t sound hurt or reproachful. He liked it better when she yelled at him. Tranquility is eerie.

“I know you are.” He tilts his head up, resting it against the wall. It takes an effort not to slam it harder onto the hard surface. 

“They won’t trust you,” says Rachel. “You know that.”

“I don’t care about their trust!” But she didn’t see Hal’s face. And now Cutler doesn’t want to think about Rook’s proposal because for all he knows, that might have been a cruel joke too. “I want people to remember my name. I don’t care if I go down in history as a hero or a villain as long as I make it.”

He expects her to be horrified. His Rachel would be. But this Rachel is sixty years older and reinvented.

“I told you before,” she says. “There is only one way.” He hesitates. She adds: “What’s one life if it saves the world? If it saves Hal?”

Cutler jumps up, infuriated.

“Fuck Hal! He’s a dick. And why should I want him off the blood anyway? He’s even more insufferable this way! Sanctimonious bastard. He almost killed someone, but it’s totally okay because he’s their _fwiend_! Hypocrites, the whole bunch of them.”

“Every time he reverts, he gets worse. The man who is coming now is not at all the man you knew. He will be cold, brutal. He will have lost everything, and there is nothing more dangerous than that.”

Cutler covers his face with his hands. He is having a minor anxiety attack. Or a major anxiety attack. Feels more like anxiety carpet bombing.

There are a lot of things about the whole War Child business that he doesn’t understand. Even if she dies now, what good will it do? Humans don’t even know she exists yet and the vampires can maintain the illusion that she is alive indefinitely. She is a baby; how hard can it be to replace a baby?

“You know what? You’re right. Maybe this is what I’m here for.” All good films are afflicted with plotholes and continuity issues. He doesn’t give a damn why the War Child must die, but if this is the way to prove his worth, then so long, infant immortality.

Sod everything; he’ll do it now. It has to be worth the looks on their faces. He just needs to make sure Annie is removed from her side.

He peeks into the room. Eve is asleep and alone. He looks around warily, but there is no sign of Annie. No sign of Yvonne either. He finds it hard to believe that Annie would just leave the War Child alone, and it’s not like she needs a bathroom break, but he’d better take this opportunity. What should he use? He can probably snap her neck with his bare hands. Or smother her with a pillow. No, let there be blood. Let them see some blood; they’re all so afraid of it.

He picks a knife up in the kitchen and returns to the room. Annie is still absent. Cutler raises the knife. He never had a soft spot for babies and he absolutely loathes this one, but–

“Look, it’s nothing personal,” he tells her. “It’s just that unfair kind of a deal: you or the world. And I like the world a bit more.”

“Nick, shut your mouth and just do it!” Rachel cries out. This is what happens when there is a telly in every room.

She’s right though. He should get cracking. He brings the knife down.

“Hey, mate, there you are! I combed the whole house, it’s like a bloody graveyard–!”

Cutler spins around, startled, and plunges the knife deep into Adam’s flesh right below the ribcage.


	6. Our Halk Smash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer** : Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Epigraph and title from “I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer” by The Cardigans. Songs mentioned and quoted in the chapter belong to their respective authors.  
>  **A/N** : _The lengths that I will go to, the distance in your eyes._

Adam blinks owlishly and takes a step back, looking down at the knife incredulously. Cutler’s hand is stained red. Blood is dripping on the floor. As far as cock-ups go, this one is somewhere between broken objects casually repairing themselves in the next frame and every army ever invading Russia in winter.

“What the–?” Adam whimpers. “That’s just brill.”

He slides down the wall onto the floor. Cutler really hopes it’s all for the sake of drama. He drops on his knees beside Adam, struggling to keep panic at bay. He tries to remember what he knows about first aid. Check the airway… no, that’s redundant in Adam’s case. Apply pressure, dress the wound, yadda-yadda. Do not remove the stabbing object. 

“Am I gonna die?” Adam blurts out.

Oh, for fuck’s sake!

“You’re not going to die. It’s just a knife wound.”

Blood continues gushing out of the wound. The knife must have nicked something major. Cutler pulls the edges of the hole in Adam’s shirt apart in order to check the wound. It looks… like a very deep stab wound. Shit.

“I don’t wanna die,” Adam says, ever so original.

Cutler tells him again that he is not dying. Realistically, he probably is. Unless he has some blood, which is a poorly orchestrated rehash of Hal’s drama in the woods. If only people around Cutler stopped getting stabbed!

Cutler takes Adam’s hands and places them over the wound.

“Keep still, mate. I’ll be right back.”

“Yvonne…”

“Yeah, I’ll go see if she’s here.”

He runs out of the room like it’s on fire and finally lets terror engulf him. What on earth possessed him to try and kill the War Child _now_? How is he going to explain all this to the others? Cutler scoffs at the empty bathroom mirror. It’s naïve to assume he will have time for making explanations. If he is lucky, Hal will stake him himself, quickly and painlessly. Well, as painlessly as getting stabbed can be. That is totally unfair: they don’t even like the brat!

He opens the tap and rinses his face with cold water. Now that the initial shock has somewhat subsided, he tries to think clearly. Did Adam see anything? The whole stabbing incident evidently won’t make it on the good deeds list, but did Adam manage to catch a glimpse of what Cutler was going to do?

And if he did, then what? At best, the brat might hold it over him indefinitely. The worst case scenario is he will blabber and Cutler gets to make an intimate acquaintance with one of Tom’s pointy wooden mates. Possibly a named one if they deem him worthy of the honour.

Cutler stops himself before he starts picking out a name in earnest.

He is not going to die. Neither is Adam. 

Cutler grabs a towel and returns to the room. Adam is still in a heap on the floor, hands where Cutler told him to keep them. His eyes are glazed, but he is conscious.

“Hey,” he says weakly, “just remembered a cool joke I saw on the Internet. Opera is when you stab a bloke in the back and instead of bleeding, he sings.”

He tries to laugh. Cutler wishes he didn’t: it’s a raw, wheezy sound that grates on Cutler’s nerves.

“Sorry I stabbed you in the wrong place then,” he mutters as he dresses the wound around the knife, wondering when exactly to remove it. The thought of calling an ambulance sends a fresh jolt of panic through him.

They can’t call human doctors. Maybe Rook’s department could do something for Adam.

Cutler googles stab wounds on his phone. It doesn’t say anything about removing the knife – except don’t do it. He grinds his teeth in frustration. Where the hell is everyone? He is not a fucking paramedic!

He tells Adam to hold the dressing and looks around the room for something to fix the edges with. A bandage or duct tape would do nicely.

“What were you doing there with a knife anyway?” Adam asks.

The knot in Cutler’s insides tightens. Adam does seem like the inquisitive type. If he is already asking questions, one can only imagine how quickly he will connect the dots once he is healed.

Thor. Yes, Cutler decides he prefers Thor. The others are too _Highlander_ (and he’s lately developed a great aversion for Scotland) or too Hollywood or too Old English and poetic. Right up Hal’s alley. With Thor, Cutler can always pretend it’s the bloke from _The Avengers_ rather than Scandinavian myths.

“Peeling an apple,” he says experimentally.

“Ah.”

There is nothing of use in the room. Cutler edges towards the door. Anxiety prickles at the back of his neck. Oddly, that’s exactly how he felt when Evil Constable Roy locked him in the holding cell with Hal.

“I think I heard something,” he says. “Maybe it’s Yvonne. I should go check.”

“Where’s the apple?” Adam asks.

Cutler breaks out into a sweat. 

“I definitely heard something. I’ll be back in a few.”

The corridor isn’t spinning in his field of vision. There is nothing as dramatic as that. But he feels dizzy and resentful of yet another gross injustice that is about to happen. He does actually like Adam, as much as he likes anyone who is not himself. 

Cutler leans against the wall and closes his eyes for a moment. Nothing disrupts the stillness of the empty house. He is quite certain they are alone. 

His legs carry him downstairs. He finds Tom’s bag in a pile of unsorted luggage. All the wood is there except for a couple of stakes, which Tom undoubtedly took with him. Cutler pulls out a smaller one and returns to Eve’s room. He moves slowly, as if struggling against forceful wind.

“Yvonne?” Adam asks hopefully.

“No, sorry, there’s no one there.” Cutler kneels beside him and squeezes his shoulder reassuringly. It would be better if Adam closed his eyes. “Sorry,” Cutler repeats, and drives the stake into Adam’s heart.

The boy jerks. A raspy gasp tears itself out of his throat. It’s not like in films, not an immediate explosion of dust. It’s slow and painful to watch as the skin turns grey and smoke curls off of it and the eyes are the last thing to go, frozen in accusation and terror. Finally the body crumbles, leaving nothing but dusty clothes behind. The knife careens and plops silently onto the padding of the bloodstained towel. Cutler’s fingers are clenched around the stake so hard it hurts, but he can’t force himself to let go. Ash gets everywhere, all over his skin, under his fingernails. Everything is either grey or red.

Having slept peacefully through the entire ugly incident, Eve chooses this particular moment to wake up and start whining. Cutler drops the stake. His rigid fingers are still flexed, claw-like. 

“Shut the hell up!” he spits. He has just staked somebody for fuck’s sake! The little bitch should show some respect. It’s all because of her after all.

“Don’t yell at her,” Rachel pulls him up.

He spins around, darts up to the telly and shouts:

“Who are you? You’re not Rachel! Show yourself!”

“Nick–.”

“You don’t get to use that name. You’re not _her_!” He shakes the television set. “Show yourself!”

The screen flickers to life. Cutler pulls away to have a better look at the image. The woman is blond, around Rachel’s age, perhaps a bit younger, but her features are more delicate, almost doll-like. She is pretty, but she is most definitely not Rachel.

“It’s not my bloody fault you couldn’t recognise your own wife’s voice,” she quips.

“Who are you?” he repeats numbly.

“Oh, Cutler, you know me very well. I am the closest person to you…” She chuckles. “In the room right now.”

He looks around and fixes a shocked gaze on the baby. The War Child. Of course. The one from the future, the one who came to Annie. He should have known.

“Oh God, you’re one fucking suicidal bitch,” he says, and laughs nervously. “I am done helping you! Look what you’ve made me do. Leave me alone, or I swear, I’ll–.”

“Do what?” she smirks. “Tell my mother? You might want to clean up first.”

He looks back at the pile of ashes and tells himself that it could have been him. But it wasn’t, isn’t, and nobody has to know. He packs the clothes into a bag and hoovers the ashes, then scrubs the floor, making sure to get rid of all the bloodstains. His head is buzzing; baby Eve typically does nothing to alleviate the ache. He washes the stake clean and puts it back into Tom’s bag. 

The room appears to be a little too clean, but at least he can’t smell blood. He sits down next to Eve and pokes her hesitantly. 

“Stop wailing, will you?” Of course she doesn’t. How do you shut a baby up via non-violent methods? “Sorry I tried to kill you. You grow up to be really annoying, you know. Good-looking, but annoying.” He sighs. “Oh, stop crying. Are you hungry? I’m hungry too; you don’t see me crying.” 

He absolutely needs to put this living, breathing alarm clock to sleep. Strangling her is obviously out of question for now. He goes over lullabies and nursery rhymes that he is familiar with and realizes that he knows none by heart. 

His crowning moment of embarrassment comes when he is singing Cat Stevens’ Wild World (it seems to be working quite well as a lullaby) and Hal walks in. Cutler finishes the refrain and raises his hands, defeated.

“My secret is out. I am not terrible with children.”

Hal looks like he is about to comment on what he’s just seen (and heard), but he backpedals in the last minute.

“I won’t tell a soul. Your reputation is safe.”

“Thank you. How was the mission?”

“Not impossible.” Huh? Cutler _knew_ it! Hal isn’t half as old mentally as he is trying to seem. “Where is Annie?” Cutler shrugs. “What, she’s just left the baby here? With you?”

Cutler pointedly ignores the brittle intonation.

“She didn’t. She just left. I heard the siren call and thought I should serenade to placate the little monster.” He is well-aware he is mixing the metaphors but the cool factor is already beyond repair.

Hal wrinkles his forehead and muttered something along the lines of “not good”. He collects Eve and takes her downstairs, passing her safely into Yvonne’s arms. The whole gang is there, except Annie. 

Cutler positions himself at the edge of the table in the living-room, safely distanced from the others. The table is heaped up with all sorts of wires, bolts and even packs of disposable syringes. Cutler is too busy inspecting all these treasures from afar to notice that the conversation has taken a dangerously Adam-focused turn.

“You mean he is not here?” Yvonne asks, alarmed. Cutler twitches and pricks up his ears. “That’s odd. He sent me a message on the phone, saying that he was heading here.” She frowns, then shakes her head resolutely. “Well, perhaps he simply got lost. It happens to him. He gets distracted when I’m not around for a prolonged period of time.”

Cutler can’t figure out if she sounds reproving or flattered because, after all, when she is around, he’s only got eyes for her. Must be neat being a succubus.

“He were supposed to find out where Mr Snow was,” Tom says.

Yvonne takes out her mobile phone and checks the messages.

“He sent me these coordinates, but last time we spoke, he said he wasn’t quite sure if Mr Snow would be there.”

How very useful.

She punches in a phone number, and Cutler belatedly realizes that she must be phoning Adam. He balls his hands into fists under the table. Did he throw the phone away along with the clothes? He can’t remember if there was a phone at all. If there was, was it set to vibrate or should he expect a cacophonous ringtone any minute now?

Yvonne purses her lips and puts the phone aside. She shrugs helplessly. Cutler almost feels sorry for her.

“Right,” Tom says. “If he don’t show up by tomorrow, then we go in anyway and hope we get lucky.”

“Just like we hoped the last time?” No one forced Cutler to talk. No, seriously, no one tortured him with red-hot iron or anything. 

Tom flashes him a sharp look.

“Here’s the plan: Alex rent-a-ghosts in, does the recon and reports back to us. If Mr Snow is there, she and Annie blow up the building. If he ain’t there, we go in, capture someone who might know where he is, and then we interrogate ‘em.”

Alex raises her eyebrows. “You make it sound so easy.”

“It is easy,” Tom says. He fixes Hal with an expectant look, as if hoping for support. Hal’s attention is directed elsewhere. “Hal?”

Hal ignores him and looks out into the corridor. 

“Annie!”

Cutler cranes out his neck and catches a glimpse of her. At first she seems not to notice Hal at all. Suddenly she starts, and exclaims:

“Eve! Where is Eve? She’s not in her room.”

“Don’t worry, she’s with us.”

Annie teleports to Yvonne’s side and takes Eve off her hands. Everyone is staring incredulously. She coos and smiles before she notices the looks.

“What is it?”

“Annie, where were you?” Hal asks.

“It weren’t Purgatory again, was it?” Tom pipes in.

Annie blinks, confused. “I was right here.”

“Not for the last three hours, you weren’t,” Cutler mutters.

Annie says icily: “I was _here_.”

Hal opens his mouth, but Alex takes the lead.

“‘Course you were.” She swings her arm around Annie’s shoulders and nudges her towards the stairs. “Come on, you need some rest. I’ll sit with you. You can teach me some more girl talk.”

“Is that normal?” Tom asks when they leave.

“More importantly, is she going to forget where she is tomorrow when she’s got a bomb in her hands?” Cutler remarks.

Yvonne chides:

“Come now, the poor girl is just tired. She’s been through so much.”

Cutler knows Hal’s “I’ve got a bad feeling about this” face well enough to notice that Hal is rather inclined to disagree, but once again, his maker chooses to keep neutral.

“It’s because of that dreadful prophecy,” Yvonne goes on. “She takes it too close to heart, I’m afraid.”

Cutler leaves them to their discussion of Annie’s state of mind. He has no useful input to offer and the mention of Future Eve disturbs him. He knows full well how convincing the yellow-haired bitch can be. If she is messing with Annie, there’s a possibility they are all fucked six ways to Sunday.

Cutler drags the television set out of his room to be safe.

* * *

Predictably, he can’t sleep at night. He tosses and turns, hunger making his blood boil. Outside, there is a megalopolis permeated with the smell of metal. They say big cities have a pulse of their own. It must be true; Cutler can feel it beating between his teeth, teasing, taunting even, like a girl wearing a skirt a tad too shirt to a church.

He grabs his phone, makes sure he’s saved the entrance code, and leaves.

Hal is waiting in the living-room when Cutler comes back. He gets up, arms folded across his chest; he is likely trying to look imposing but Cutler is too tired to feel properly intimidated.

Cutler marches up to him, close enough to make him feel uncomfortable. Hal tenses. His ideal personal space these days equals half a city around him.

“What are you doing?” he asks warily. It’s also his default question now.

“Giving you what you want,” Cutler murmurs, leaning into him. His feels bold tonight.

Hal’s eyes are once again bright, frightened. Cutler enjoys it but he is not patient enough to fan the flames.

“You want to make sure I haven’t slipped.” He all but presses into Hal. “Take a whiff.”

It’s redundant, but Hal takes a deep breath through the nose anyway. His nostrils flare; he swallows convulsively, and takes a step back. Cutler grins and raises his hand, in which he is holding a bottle of whiskey. 

“I’m in the mood for a different kind of drink tonight.”

He brushes past Hal to go upstairs. He doesn’t ask Hal along, but a moment later, the sound of footsteps, light, hesitant, follows. Cutler leaves the door open. Hal falters on the doorstep.

“I invite you in,” Cutler chaffs.

Hal rolls his eyes, steps in and shuts the door. He looks clean and impersonal just like the house itself, yet he manages to seem much more out of place here than Cutler in his dirt-stained suit (he desperately needs another one, but what is the point of shopping if they are going to fight more vampires tomorrow?) with a bottle of cheap liquor. Hal cringes at the smell when Cutler pours him a drink. Snob. Not that Cutler is any different.

Hal is perched on the edge of the bed, watching Cutler tap out a rhythm over the night table.

“What’s that?” he asks quietly, half-curious, half-trying to break the ice.

Nick smiles, a little embarrassed.

“ _Losing My Religion_.” Hal’s blank face speaks for itself. “Don’t tell me– Everybody knows that song!”

Hal shrugs awkwardly.

“I’m beginning to think you have chosen the wrong profession.”

Cutler takes a sip, more of an echo, which bites at his mouth warmly. 

“I wanted to,” he admits. “Not that I seriously thought I could have a career in music. It was a fancy of sorts.”

“What made you change your mind?”

Cutler smiles. 

“Rachel. As soon as I knew I’d marry her, I reckoned I should have a proper income. Besides, I’m good at my job. Bloody great at it, actually.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Have you really never heard _Losing My Religion_?”

Hal keeps quiet. This is quite frankly tragic. Cutler looks through the music menu and plays back the song. He watches Hal while it lasts. The irony of the lyrics, strangely applicable to both of them, is not lost on him.

“I propose a game.” Cutler sits back against the headboard, his phone on his lap. “I play a new song. You recognize it, I drink. You don’t, you drink.”

Hal’s first impulse is clearly to refuse. He frowns, shrinks, and then nods. Cutler chooses another song, a Beatles one, and almost completely on purpose.

Here comes the sun  
And I say it’s all right…

“Either you’re playing at giveaway,” Hal chuckles, “or you take me for an utterly clueless oaf.”

Cutler toasts with his glass. 

The next three drinks are Hal’s until he somehow recognises Metallica’s _Until It Sleeps_. Cutler snickers and downs the remains of his whiskey. He refills the glass.

“We are getting drunk on the eve of a potential attack,” Hal comments. “Not a very wise decision.”

Cutler shrugs. “I don’t see any wise men here.” His finger hovers over the touchscreen, itching to cut the song short. It’s another one of those too close to home things. 

Looking at Hal makes him want to scratch his eyes out. It’s been over half a century, and Cutler still remembers what Hal’s fangs feel like piercing his skin, what Hal’s blood tastes like, what Hal’s hands can do.

He clenches his fingers around the glass. Hal fails to recognize the next song that comes up, some pop tune, the title of which even Cutler can’t remember without looking at the file name. Cutler watches him drink, captivated by the tension in his throat as he swallows. Hal quivers. He balls his fists; his knuckles are white and the skin taut between them is dry, reddish.

“How bad is Annie?” Cutler asks, surprising both Hal and himself. Too late to go back now. “I know you didn’t want to say anything in front of Tom, but I can see you know something. What’s wrong with her?”

“Leo and I,” Hal says, “we feared it would happen to Pearl in the long run. When a ghost loses their anchor, they become… unstable. They forget things, stop using their powers and eventually just fade.” His lips twitched in a brief, sad smile. “Annie has lost so much. Her friends, both her homes…”

“Yeah, but she’s still got you and Tom and the little monster.”

“Out of all of us, Eve is the only one truly keeping her here. But today’s blackout has shown that it might not be enough.”

Cutler gives him a sullen look.

“Hal, taking her with us tomorrow is like entrusting an Alzheimer patient with a… well, a home-made bomb!”

“Are you suggesting I bar her from defending her own daughter?”

Cutler tactfully refrains from pointing out yet again that Eve is not in fact Annie’s daughter. They all seem to conveniently forget that. He wants to tell Hal about Future Eve and how much she really wants to die, but that would call for disclosing certain information he is not ready to share. At least not when Hal is sitting on his bed and having a civilized conversation with him.

“I’m only suggesting that we swap Annie for Yvonne,” Cutler says cautiously. “We’re not dragging the War Child with us anyway. She needs a babysitter.”

“So you want to leave her with someone who might just forget about her?”

“Better her than a bomb,” Cutler parries. 

He knows that he doesn’t have to win Hal over because Hal has already been on his side. Tom’s plan won’t change significantly if they have one ghost instead of two. They could always just kill Yvonne and block her door if need be.

(It’s that awkward moment when Cutler doesn’t know if he is joking or not.)

“Hal,” he says. Hal’s name is something people have been known to choke on. “Where do you think our victims go after death?” Hal knits his eyebrows, surprised. Cutler amends: “Is it… nice there? Or do they suffer because… of us?”

Something that fake Rachel said. It’s been scratching at the back of his mind ever since.

“I don’t know,” Hal admits. “But I hope they are at peace.” He adds softly: “It’s normal. The guilt, the pain you’re feeling. All of it is normal. It hits when the high wears off.”

Hal would know all about it, considering he does nothing but wallow in guilt complete with snapping at people and acting morally superior. 

He doesn’t sound superior now. He sounds like he cares. A little. Cutler resists the urge to kick him out of the room because he childishly cannot handle the feelings.

“Yeah,” he says with a strained smile. “I’ll survive.”

That old, deep-seated need to make Hal proud stops him from admitting out loud that it’s not guilt he is feeling. Perhaps there is something fundamentally wrong with him. Did he ever feel anything but hunger and lust and fear? Was he like this as a human too? It was so long ago that he thinks of that man as a stranger, but he is far from certain that stranger was any better than Nick Cutler is now.

* * *

Come morning, Tom hands everyone syringes filled with his blood. Yvonne has agreed to replace Annie (with surprisingly little resistance from the latter). Cutler wishes someone would replace him. Perhaps he should offer this job to Rook.

Cut to: Darkness. Piles of debris. Enclosed space. Cutler inhales convulsively, automatically, through his mouth, his nostrils filled with dust. 

Yvonne’s voice:

“What happened?”

“Looks like we’re not the only terrorists in town.”

He coughs, turns his head and shudders at the pain in his neck. Feels about himself blindly. Nothing seems to be broken. His leg is wedged beneath the rubble. 

“Was that a bomb?” Yvonne asks. “Was it ours?”

Cutler has no idea what it was. He remembers a derelict building somewhere on the outskirts and a construction site nearby. Alex rent-a-ghosting in and out and reporting Mr Snow is not there. Tom declaring they must capture a vampire. (How many are there? – Three.)

It’s all a bit of a muddle.

Cutler grabs Tom by the elbow and whispers:

“Haven’t you once already fallen for the same ruse?” Back when Cutler filmed him and George transforming. Tom remembers it too, and flashes Cutler a dark look, pulling his arm free and saying they haven’t got any other options.

Tom may be the leader but he’s not a brilliant strategist.

It’s too late to be nitpicking at the plan, but Cutler does anyway. Why do they all have to go in? Shouldn’t someone stay outside and keep watch? Are there really only three people inside or are those just the ones Alex has seen? Where is Snow? Why didn’t Adam–?

(Because Adam is dead. The award for the most impractical murder ever goes to Nick Cutler.)

Yvonne’s heartbeat is deafening. Cutler wrinkles his nose; his mouth fills with a sharp, metallic sting.

“Are you bleeding?”

“Just a bit.” She sounds apologetic. “My hand.”

He feels his released fangs with the tip of his tongue. Was there a fight? The closer to the blackout, the less he can reconstruct. Somewhere along the way the building collapsed. (That can actually be pretty impressive if you’re watching from the outside. He remembers seeing the news in September 2001 and thinking: _wow_.)

They are not in danger of suffocating; Nick can feel a draught coming from somewhere to his left. It’s not very good. It means Yvonne might survive. If she died now, he could – maybe – feed, and it wouldn’t be as if he’d killed her, right? He jerks, but his leg is firmly planted in the debris. He doesn’t know how bad she is hurt. She could have a concussion, which would make her movements sluggish, so if he tried hard enough, he could–

“Do you think they will come for us?” Yvonne asks in a small voice. Before he can answer, she says, a bit of usual steel creeping back into her tone: “Dear me, what am I on about? They should not. We should free ourselves. No use putting the others in danger.”

Cutler remembers a glimpse of Hal’s face when the building started coming apart. That’s the strangest part: he remembers the fact but not the expression on that face. Was Hal worried? Relieved? Unconcerned?

This is the part where the film gets dull again. There should be an epic montage of the others planning a daring rescue mission. Unless it’s not such a big deal for them to lose two more people. 

(Rewind: half an hour before the mission. Cutler is making fun of their ragtag team.

“Let’s do the headcount. We’ve got the Atoner with a drug problem, mentally unstable Action Mum, Plucky Girl, two potential Accidental Heroes, one of whom is M.I.A., trigger-happy Action Pet and yours truly, the cheeky bystander. What can possibly go wrong?”)

He can hear Yvonne moving in the dark. Perhaps it is he who has a concussion. He feels really sleepy. And hungry. Always.

“You’re thinking about Adam,” he says. _He_ is thinking about Adam. Has been thinking about Adam ever since. He talks because while he is not claustrophobic, he doesn’t want to face the darkness now. 

“It might seem silly,” Yvonne admits. “Being worried sick over someone like him. He’s not even really younger than me. But he can be so childish. He’s got this need to impress, to prove something.” She pauses. Cutler squirms. Pain shoots up his leg. “I wasn’t aware of my true nature until I met Annie, Tom and Hal. It was Hal who figured it out. When Adam found out, he…”

Cutler takes a guess:

“Panicked?”

“As did I. We were both on the verge of doing some very foolish things. Fortunately, the matter was resolved. However, Adam is very concerned that I might even for a moment believe that it is the spell keeping us together.” She cuts herself off. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

No, I am, he thinks. It’s not guilt per se. It’s just that he really wishes there could have been another way.

She is suddenly very close. He jerks instinctively when he feels her hand on his leg.

“It’s not broken,” she says. “Just stuck. I think I can pull it free.” If she uses her voodoo on him, they are both dead.

“Adam is so zen about being on the wagon because of you, isn’t he?”

“We believe so. Brace yourself, dear, it might hurt.”

 _Dear_. She sounds like his bloody grandmother. She’s actually really nice. The nicest of them all. Why does she have to be so nice when he’s just staked her boyfriend?

He cries out when she releases his leg. His torn trouser-leg is drenched in blood. He sits up, his face inches away from Yvonne’s. He can feel her breath on his cheek.

“Will you please consider not biting me?” Yvonne whispers.

Cutler blinks. It’s the most bizarre and courteous “don’t kill me” he has ever heard. He turns towards the source of cold air. There is a narrow tunnel there amidst the debris. He decides to go first in case there are vampires there – and he’s being chivalrous quite needlessly because Yvonne could just convert them all into her personal knights in shining armour with a single touch. 

If he turns around while he’s blocking her way out, she will have nowhere to hide, nowhere to go. If he drinks her blood, his leg will stop hurting. 

There is a greyish gleam ahead. Daylight. He squints and crawls forward by jerks. Yvonne is right behind him. He pushes a bit of debris out of the way. A sharp splinter of wood cuts his wrist. He hisses in pain. Daylight ahead becomes brighter. Cutler grunts and reaches for it. In fiction, vampires often have to climb out of their own graves. Cutler is basically fulfilling a semi-mandatory trope of the vampire genre.

He grabs Yvonne’s forearm, helping her to get out of the tunnel. They lie on the ground, catching their breath. The building doesn’t look like it’s burnt, more like it has simply collapsed.

“Can you walk?” Yvonne asks, helping him up on his feet.

Cutler puts his weight on the hurt leg experimentally and winces in pain.

“More or less.”

They move slowly away from the sound of cars in the street. Someone was bound to report a collapsed building, weren’t they?

“Going somewhere?”

Yvonne tenses. Cutler looks up and sees Milo’s predatory face. Sod’s law in action.

Cutler uses the only weapon he’s got left, Tom’s syringe, and charges at Milo. Yvonne gasps quietly. Milo laughs, intercepts Cutler’s hand and twists it. The syringe drops on the ground.

“Werewolf blood,” Milo scoffs. “I’ve got five litres of it right here.”

In a flurry of motion, Yvonne is upon him, brandishing her own syringe like a dagger. She plunges the needle into his eye. Milo screams and releases Cutler, flailing his arms and roaring like a wounded animal.

“Still must hurt though,” Yvonne mutters. Some teacher. She’s a bloody demon Amazon!

They keep running. Milo staggers after them. His back-up consisting of several vampires has arrived. Perhaps they shouldn’t have: before Cutler even thinks of starting to panic, the vampires are sent flying in all directions. He’s never been happier to see ghosts.

Tom enters the fray, swinging two large stakes. Yvonne and Cutler sweep past him towards Hal. Cutler doesn’t look back but he knows the crunchy sound of a stake entering a body when he hears it. 

“That was quick,” he mutters.

“We feared you might eat Yvonne,” Tom says briskly as he catches up with them. Cutler scowls.

“But you didn’t,” Hal says. He hooks Cutler’s arm around his shoulders, helping him to keep his balance.

There is that absurd need to please Hal again. Cutler tells himself it’s just a residue of a feeling, but Hal’s lips twitch in a small smile, and maybe this rehab thing isn’t that bad after all.

“Not my type,” Cutler mouthes jokingly. “Meanwhile, you really should watch your goddamn bombs.”

“Weren’t a bomb,” Tom says. 

When they finally reach the car, Cutler looks back at the fallen building.

“The hell is that?”

“They dropped a construction crane on us,” Alex says cheerfully. “Pretty ingenious and could be qualified as an industrial accident.”

Cutler sighs. It figures that the bad guys would be more resourceful than the good guys. 

Though that could be disputed. There is one more pursuer left, and Yvonne suddenly turns around and heads back. He bares his fangs but she doesn’t let him do anything. She places her hand on his cheek. He deflates all of a sudden. She whispers something to him, takes his hand and leads him back to the car. The vampire follows obediently.

“Our objective was to take a vampire prisoner, wasn’t it?” Yvonne asks nonchalantly, meeting Tom’s stunned look. “Mission accomplished, I believe.”

* * *

Hot water feels almost painful on Cutler’s bruises. He’s not throwing an obligatory hysterical fit in the shower, though he’s dangerously close to it. 

How does a dry vampire heal if blood is off limits? The answer is simple: don’t get hurt.

Cutler towels off and examines the damage. He looks pretty much like one hundred and one Dalmatians all rolled into one. He gets dressed and limps towards his bedroom, feeling like a building has collapsed on top of him.

Oh, wait.

“Cutler.”

He starts. _How_ is she doing that? The bloody television is off and not plugged in!

He looks around. Everybody seems to be downstairs, but he wheels the telly back into the room anyway, just to be safe. He glowers at the War Child expectantly.

“You haven’t got much time,” she says. “April 11 is the day after tomorrow.”

“So?”

“This is when Mr Snow kills the Prime Minister.”

He gapes at her. She had the date all along and she couldn’t share it in advance? 

“So either you watch the world going to hell on telly along with everybody else, or you deliver the War Child’s corpse to Snow and gloat. Take your pick.”

Can she possibly be more dramatic?

“What if we just take another baby?” Cutler suggests. “He’s never seen you, he won’t know the difference. All babies look the same anyway.”

“Have you got any idea how many people have already died for me?” she snaps. “Will die for me still?”

That must make her feel hugely uncomfortable.

“No wonder you turned out this way,” he grumbles.

“I suppose it’s you I have to thank, seeing as you’ve played a part in both my biological parents’ death.”

Must. Not. Set the telly on fire.

“All right, Cutler.” Her tone turns strangely business-like. “You left me with no choice. Unless you kill the baby, I will ensure that the others know exactly what you did to Adam.”

She’s got him cornered. Whatever she tells them, the blame falls on him. Not only she is their precious War Child, but she is also technically trying to commit suicide, not murder. The law is on her side.

“You’ve got one day,” says Eve. “If she’s not dead by April 11, you will be.”

Cutler cannot even bring himself to be properly afraid. Not with the ache in his bones and Hal’s tiny encouraging smile still fresh in his memory.

* * *

Downstairs, there is a war zone. Tea cups everywhere, and Hal is badgering Alex to stop trying to drink from them. Judging by splashes of tea all over the floor, which Hal adroitly mops up as soon as they appear, she doesn’t intend to stop.

Yvonne is making dinner. Nobody brings up Adam. 

Tom emerges from one of the rooms, holding a bloodied knife. Cutler grimaces.

“Things aren’t going well with the prisoner then?”

“He’s got a horn for Yvonne, all right,” Alex says. “But apparently it’s not enough for him to sell out you-know-who.” She snickers. “Everyone’s so scared of this guy. Even Hal.”

“I’ve got an idea.” 

It’s not really a useful idea, but good for mucking about. Cutler enters the room where the lovesick prisoner is strapped to a chair, and goes straight for the computer. A quick search surrenders the results he needs. An upbeat tune starts playing. He turns the volume up, puts the song on repeat and walks out, shutting the door.

“No way this is gonna work,” Tom remarks sceptically.

“Works just fine in Guantanamo.” Allegedly.

A sugary female voice sings:

Hey, I just met you,  
And this is crazy,  
But here's my number,  
So call me, maybe? 

Alex gives Cutler a horrified look. “You are evil.”

Finally someone’s noticed.

They have dinner in the living-room, together. Grimmauld Place is much bigger than Adam and Yvonne’s cottage; back there they didn’t have a choice. Here, they all have their own bedrooms; they could eat alone, but it’s a force of habit, Cutler thinks. Sometimes it’s better to be with the people you barely know and don’t like very much than to be alone.

* * *

Cutler has to admit the captive vampire possesses amazing endurance. He has spent all night listening to that song and still hasn’t started talking. Perhaps he’s gone mad. Tom thinks it’s ridiculous, but to Cutler, it’s a matter of principle.

In the morning, the vampire grudgingly gives up the date: April 11. Hal circles it red in the calendar like it’s a bloody state holiday. Alex can’t believe Cutler’s torture methods are working. Neither can Cutler for that matter. (Never mind that Day X is old news to him.)

April 11 is tomorrow. Cutler hasn’t slept because of it. Eve hasn’t made her move yet.

He gets cabin fever. It seems that everyone looks askance at him (when they deign to look at him at all). 

The perks of being ignored: he observes a lot of things. He can see that Yvonne’s faith in Adam is wavering. He has been away from her long enough for the spell to wear off. Moreover, he’s been rubbing elbows with proper vampires; surely he’s leapt off the wagon by now. Surely he’s chosen to leave her.

In the room where Cutler killed Adam, Annie is falling apart. He can hear her mutter under her breath as he walks past the half-open door:

“Mitchell, George, Nina. Eve, Tom, Hal. Mitchell, George, Nina. Eve, Tom, Hal.”

Almost an incantation.

Alex wants to go out. Tom insists on accompanying her because she is a lady. If she is a lady, then Cutler is Queen Victoria. And Tom didn’t have any problem sending a lady to blow people up.

Hal is elsewhere, half a ghost himself with his dominoes and his memories of Leo and Pearl and his hunger the size of a forest fire.

Cutler can’t take the sepulchral atmosphere anymore. Besides, he needs some air. And a ticket to Brazil. And a memory transplant.

The worst thing about being on the wagon is not the hunger. It’s thinking too much about the things that didn’t seem to matter before. Like how much it sucks that Adam is dead. And how Rachel might not be at peace like he’d chosen to believe. And the world he’d invested in turned out to be a nightmare.

And he’s scared. Terrified in fact. He’s no Atticus Finch, so he can’t for the life of him see it as a good thing. Given the choice, he’d rather be the man with a gun in his hand.

He wonders how Eve is going to expose him. She would have to expose herself first – and yeah, he’s already been over this. No one is going to blame her.

It’s sunny outside.

That’s almost too weird.

* * *

Upon returning to Grimmauld Place, Cutler slinks off upstairs, unwilling to spy on any more emotional moments. The house is dark and quiet as opposed to the vivacious, bustling city around it.

Cutler finds Hal in his room. It’s a surprise, but whether it is a pleasant or an unpleasant one, Nick hasn’t figured out yet. 

“I’m hiding from Alex,” Hal explains sourly. “I still don’t understand why she blames me for her death when there’s you.”

This statement just about sums Hal Yorke up. Inconsiderate, self-involved arsehole.

Cutler shuts the door. Hal’s nostrils flare. Ah, so he has noticed.

“It’s mine.” Cutler raises his hand. His knuckles are skinned and coated with blood. “I had an argument… with a brick wall.”

“You had an argument with a wall.” It’s not a question.

“It was in my way. Walls don’t tell me where to go!”

Hal comes closer, takes Cutler’s hand, examines and pronounces that Cutler is not dying. Cap is quite observant today.

“It’s healing bloody slowly,” Cutler grumbles. “Can I have my hand back?”

“Can I have some of your blood?”

Cutler’s eyes widen. “You’re _cheating_!”

“It’s– Tomorrow, if we do this, I’d rather have at least a semblance of control.”

That makes total sense. Choose Cutler for his high nutritional value. Oh, what the hell. He pulls his hand free and brings it up to Hal’s mouth. Hal’s tongue sweeps over the bloodied skin, licking the injury clean. His fingers travel down Cutler’s wrist, mapping out the veins. He jerks Cutler’s hand up and clamps his mouth on the wrist, teeth sinking in. Cutler moans softly. 

Selfish bastard. He’s got absolutely no regard for what he is doing to Cutler.

Hal lets go. His eyes are black but the expression on his face is open, vulnerable. Cutler scoffs.

“They don’t know how bad it is, do they? They don’t know the half of it.”

“If you tell them, I swear I’ll kill you,” Hal spits, and slams Cutler into the wall.

That’s more like it. This is Hal. His Hal.

Cutler decides he is entitled to a little something as well. He lurches forward and mashes their lips together. All of this has a nasty last-night-on-earth-take-two feel to it. He bites at Hal’s lips, drawing blood. There are no alarm bells going off in his head. Not because of the blood at least.

He pushes Hal away. Fuck it, he’s got pride!

“You think it’s that simple?” he spits.

“It doesn’t look overly complicated to me,” Hal notes, the look on his face vaguely suggestive.

He leans closer. His lips glide down the side of Cutler’s neck, open and warm, not hiding the teeth in the slightest. Hal is like a digger looking for gold under his skin. “Fuck you” escalates into “fuck me” shamefully quickly.

They have to be extra quiet in this haunted house. It’s fine; they have played this game before. It’s one of Hal’s favourite actually: silent struggle, withheld moans, blood between the teeth.

Hal’s hands are shaking, knocking into Cutler’s hands, swatting them aside to cover up the nervousness. Hal used to be so self-assured; now he’s fussing like a teenager desperate to hide his first time jitters.

He is hot and hard in Cutler’s hand, needy beyond all shame. Cutler feels the same old upheaval inside, the nauseating desire, which is fifty shades of pathetic after half a century of neglect. He reminds himself that he hates Hal – but he has always hated Hal, and wanted Hal, and wanted to be Hal, and to be with Hal. 

It’s going to be quick and dirty, and Cutler welcomes it. His pride is on hiatus.

Hal turns him around abruptly so that he is facing the wall, and shoves his trousers down. An undignified whimper escapes Cutler’s mouth. Hal spreads him open, presses against him, tantalizing, unintentionally cruel, which makes it so much worse. Cutler wants to take him in, to push back against him and show him that he is out of his depths this time, that he doesn’t know what he’s stirring awake. Hal’s teeth graze the back of Cutler’s neck.

A sharp, clear trill of a ringtone fills the room.

Cutler’s eyes widen. He’s all set to ignore the call, but Hal tenses behind him.

“If you don’t finish this, I’ll kill you,” Cutler hisses.

“Who’s phoning you?” Hal whispers. “Everyone you know is here.”

That’s… actually a very good question. Cursing inwardly, Cutler shoves Hal aside and marches up to the phone. He adjusts his clothes on the way. This is humiliating and probably health-threatening.

He takes the call and hears Rook’s voice:

“Get out of the house. Now.”

Great. It’s like the forest all over again.

* * *

Downstairs, somebody is trying to get in. Alex says it’s Milo, and sure enough, the werewolf marches in, sporting an eyepatch like a pirate and inviting a slew of vampires in. They haven’t got any time to reach Tom’s stakes. 

Eve is still upstairs. Annie attempts to rent-a-ghost to her, but stays rooted to the spot. Alex takes the initiative and disappears. Annie raises her hand to stop the vampires that are set on pursuing Alex; nothing happens. She waves her hand again and again, but her power doesn’t seem to work.

Cutler really, really hates fighting. With Annie incapacitated, he and Hal are the only ones standing between Eve and the attackers while Tom grapples with Milo.

“Why are you doing this?” Tom asks. “You’re a werewolf! Why are you working for them?”

“Just earning my keep, boy,” Milo replies calmly. 

He blocks Tom’s attack and throws him to the floor. Tom bucks up, aiming a blow at Milo’s crotch. Milo narrowly escapes it, grips Tom’s ankle and twists. Three vampires lunge at him, while the others continue holding back Hal and Cutler. Annie cries out Tom’s name and throws herself upon the attackers. One of them swipes her across the face; she lurches backwards and watches helplessly as the vampires drag Tom out.

Cutler realizes suddenly that for once they are not after the War Child. As skilled as they are, they wouldn’t stand a chance even against one ghost protecting the baby.

Milo pins a piece of paper to the wall.

“You want your friend back, give us a ring. Provided you are ready to surrender the baby.”

He calls off the remaining men. The door creaks as they swing it closed in their wake.

Annie looks frightened. Hal helps her get up and she drapes herself around him, burying her face at the crook of his neck. She checks herself a moment later, perhaps remembering that he is neither Mitchell nor George. They both look shocked and lost.

“How did they find the house?” Annie murmurs.

Cutler has a nasty feeling that someone must have seen him earlier today. He doesn’t share it. 

Alex and Yvonne join them. Cutler looks at Eve lying in the armchair and listens to them debate whether or not they should leave the house now with half an ear. It was very sweet of Rook to warn him, but couldn’t he have done it some half an hour earlier (and not when Cutler was in the middle of something)? 

Eve blinks sleepily. He pictures her adult eyes, hard and uncompromising. Perhaps she is justified in her wish to die: she is so little but she reaps tributes like an Old One. Cutler is terrified of her. She isn’t so much a baby as a cursed object, and he’s been in contact with her long enough to have the curse transferred on him.

“…still hasn’t returned my calls.”

Cutler tenses. Adam. They are discussing Adam again.

“I don’t think Adam’s coming back,” Alex says quietly. Everyone looks at her. “I found this in the corridor upstairs.” She holds up a simple golden ring on a black cord and shows it to Yvonne. “At first I thought it belonged to the previous owners, but it would be one hell of a coincidence if they’d worn a ring with your name on it.”

She traces the inside of the ring with her finger. Yvonne opens her palm and Alex drops the ring onto it.

“It’s Adam’s wedding ring.”

“I’m sorry, _what_?” Annie cuts in.

“Long story. He seldom wore it on his finger, especially if he knew he was going somewhere dangerous.”

“Wait, but you two got _married_?” Annie’s mind apparently boggles at the news. So does Cutler’s. He edges away from them. “Congratulations!”

“Adam could have only been here without us know when we were out,” Alex says, and turns to Cutler. “But you weren’t.”

There it goes. He wonders vaguely what exactly Eve did to let Alex find the ring. He knew he’d forgotten something. It’s a bloody trope.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers numbly. _Please don’t kill me._

“What are you sorry for?” Yvonne demands. “What is she talking about?”

Cutler can’t look at her. But looking at Hal is even worse. His face is stony, emotionless.

“Yvonne, I think Adam is dead,” Alex says quietly.

Cutler feels sick.

“I’m sorry! I didn’t– It was an accident!”

“How!?” There is steel in Yvonne’s voice and her eyes are red. Cutler instinctively backs away.

“It wasn’t him I was going for, it was her! She forced me! She pretended to be my wife. Adam saw me and I accidentally stabbed him and then I was afraid you’d find out and you found out anyway! I didn’t mean to!”

He chokes on the last words. He really didn’t mean for Adam to die. It just happened. Why can’t they understand it?

“Eve?” Annie whispers.

Her eyes light up blue – and of course she functions perfectly now. Cutler rams into the wall, the wind knocked out of him, and cries out:

“For Christ’s sake, she showed you that future! I was trying to help!”

He’s clearly exaggerated his own importance. They will not waste time looking for Thor. He will be staked by a nameless, shapeless chair leg. 

“Hal?” Alex says.

Having turned all their attention to Cutler, they completely ignored Hal who strolled up to Eve and picked her up carefully. He looks at her now like she is the only other person in the room, positively fascinated.

Annie lets Cutler go.

“Hal, what are you–?”

“Strange, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “So much fuss over something so small. But she grows into it, doesn’t she? She grows up ruthless, callous and manipulative. Almost like a perfect vampire without the hunger. As Lord Hal, I would be so proud.”

Something about him has changed. Chill touches up Cutler’s spine. Excitement, too.

“Hal, give me back the baby,” Annie says warily. “Please.”

From the corner of his eye, Cutler sees Alex raise her hand uncertainly. Hal notices it too and wraps his fingers gently around Eve’s neck.

“Uh-huh. You might want to think your actions through.”


	7. Our Electric Boogaloo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer** : _Being Human_ belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Epigraph and title from “I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer” by The Cardigans. Quote from Matthew 10:34.  
>  **A/N** : _The subtitle "Electric Boogaloo" [...] suggests a sequel that is ridiculous, absurd, unwanted, unnecessary, formulaic, or obscure. (c) Wikipedia._

“I had such hopes for her,” Hal goes on in a bored voice. “She was supposed to destroy the vampires, not give them free reign. We keep losing friends, killing friends because of her – and what for? What is the point?”

Annie looks smaller now, deflated, her teary eyes fixed on Hal’s hand. 

“I’ve always despised the concept of the greater good,” Hal says conversationally. “It’s a little too difficult to tell apart from the greater evil.”

“You were supposed to protect her,” Annie whispers.

Hal laughs.

“Supposed to? I don’t remember having been appointed anyone’s protector. I should think I am quite the opposite. If you’ve got any doubts, let me show you something.”

He tugs the collar of his shirt down to reveal an ugly patch of burnt skin on his left shoulder. Annie’s lips tremble.

“But I don’t– Eve, she herself is the nemesis. She’s got the burn.”

Hal’s hand is back to Eve’s throat, but he doesn’t look like he is about to strangle her any minute. His fingers brush over her chest gently and he rocks her in his arms.

“If you do anything to her, the vampires won’t rise,” Alex says.

Hal glances up, a sardonic smile playing on his lips.

“Open your eyes, little girl. We already have.” He takes Milo’s note off the wall and says: “I’m done believing in prophecies. I could fool myself indefinitely, but it wouldn’t change the end result. We are all monsters: you and I and even she. She should be with her own kind.”

Cutler clings to the wall, trying to stay unnoticed. Hal, contradictory as ever. What the hell is he on about? First he wants to kill the baby; now he’s evidently taking her back to Snow.

“Please don’t do this,” Annie whispers weakly.

Hal winks at her. 

“Don’t wait up.”

Cutler watches him leave with a sinking feeling. Is that him? Is this the Hal Eve has warned him about? The Hal of many faces as usual. Cutler hates his sudden transformations. 

Annie turns to him slowly.

“Get out.”

Her voice is cold and thick like grave dirt. Cutler asks:

“Where would I go?”

“Get out!” she yells, and he darts out of the house before she tosses him out.

Screw this. All of this. He is not a hero. He is not a fighter. Sweat, sticky and hot, covers the back of his neck. He’s had enough of this shit. The only thing he can do now is try and figure out which country will be the last to fall when Mr Snow starts his campaign and move there. Then again, knowing his luck, any place he moves to will be the first to go like bloody Alderaan.

He starts when a car nearly hits him. He wants to yell at the driver, but he recognizes the old blue Merc and thinks: really, what else is there? He walks around it and knocks on the window.

“Take me with you.”

He knocks again, to emphasize the request. Hal rolls his eyes and opens the door.

“Why?”

“Why not? They’ll kill me if I stay.”

“So don’t stay.”

Cutler sighs exasperatedly. It occurs to him that Hal is most likely mocking him on purpose. It’s just something he does when he gets bored: pushes people’s buttons.

He gets into the car. Hal may appeal to the Supreme Court if he likes.

“Listen. I think we both know that you’re the only reason I’ve been keeping up this farce. I don’t know who I was kidding.”

There goes his pride, staked and ineligible for the resurrection ritual.

“I thought you told me not to flatter myself,” Hal quips. He likes to make it seem like he’s got split personalities or something (Cutler overheard him trying to explain his “cycles” to Alex), but the truth is that the man he is so afraid of is always there, hiding in the sharp bend of his eyebrows when he flashes those superior smiles showcasing that yes, Hal Yorke is better than you.

“Well, I lied,” Cutler deadpans. “I’m a dishonest person. Sue me.” Hal gives him a half-condescending, half-dubious look that makes Cutler want to punch him. Not that he needs any additional incentive. “You’re my maker, for Christ’s sake!” Cutler snaps. “Take some fucking responsibility.”

Whether it’s his insolence that does the trick or the blatant despair in his tone of voice, Cutler doesn’t know. Hal relents and gestures at him to shut the door.

“I need your phone,” he says.

Cutler reluctantly parts with the phone and glances back at Eve who is sprawled in the backseat. He is pretty sure this is the wrong way of transporting a baby. Hal appears to have the same idea. Cutler scoops Eve up, largely against his will, and cradles her on his lap. No wonder she grows up traumatized.

“Has she really spoken to you?” Hal asks.

Cutler nods vaguely and adds:

“She’s kind of creepy. You’re creating her right now, you know.”

A steely smile flashes on Hal’s lips.

“I know.”

When they are far enough from the house, Hal dials Milo’s number and says: “I’ve got your baby if you’ve got my dog.” 

Cutler flashes back to their first meeting. Hal looked like a mafia boss who got arrested for illegal gambling. The air of raw power, the sheer lack of regard for anything or anyone other that himself inspired Cutler with fear and envy, the likes of which he hadn’t known before. He catches glimpses of that man now, lurking beneath the cracked façade of the new Hal, and doesn’t know how he feels about it.

Hal listens to Milo’s reply. When he is done, he callously tosses the phone out of the car window. Cutler yelps.

“We wouldn’t want your new friend to follow us, would we?” Hal insinuates. 

They arrive at the address Milo gave him in a little less than an hour. It is a two-storeyed building with tinted glass windows and a lattice over the door. A restaurant most likely. Fitting.

Milo meets them at the back door and takes them to the dining-hall. The furniture is draped in cloths of red and black velvet; Cutler half-expects to see golden tableware. The smell of flowers and fresh blood tickles his nostrils. 

“You’ve made the right choice, Lord Hal,” Milo says. “I assume you’ll be wanting the werewolf back now.”

Hal casts a bored look around the dining-hall. His lip curls in vague distaste, though it is unclear whether Milo’s tone, his words or the setting are the reason.

“I shall surrender the child only to Mr Snow,” he says drily. “Where is he?”

“He’s not here,” says Milo. “But he will be. I’m sure you can–.”

“I’ll wait.”

Milo narrows his eye. 

“With all due respect, sir, you are hardly a match for us without your ghosts and your werewolf.”

Cutler is both glad and resentful of not being included in the picture. He inches closer to Hal but doesn’t make an effort to bring himself forward. Hal is a big boy; he can take care of himself.

“Watch your tone with me, dog,” Hal says flatly. “I have here a few ounces of pure human blood, and I happen to be very _hungry_.” He flashes his fangs in a snarl. 

Milo flexes his jaw but steps down. Hal orders a crib or a perambulator brought in. Cutler has to admit that watching Lord Hal rocking a baby in his arms is the strangest thing.

“We’ve got big plans for today,” Milo informs Hal. “Mr Snow might not be here first thing in the morning.”

“Then phone him and tell him to be. If he wants the War Child, he must get her himself.”

The vampires that are slowly filling the room to feast their eyes upon the miracle baby cower before Hal. Cutler feels a stab of pride mixed with jealousy. This is his maker, the man whose blood flows in Cutler’s veins; yet Cutler will never bear himself like this. He slouches whereas Hal is as straight-backed as a ballet dancer and glares when Hal is composed and regally contemptuous. He chews on his lips when he gets nervous and his hair looks like a bird’s nest half the time. He has no qualms about his appearance, but compared to Hal, he is a veritable waste of space. 

Rook wants him to lead the vampires. What a joke.

A woman draped in a white fur mantlet brings a baby basket. She stares at the War Child in wonder and murmurs:

“May I at least hold her?”

Cutler snorts. Future Eve would be so flattered by all this attention. 

“No,” Hal says curtly, taking the basket from her.

Milo takes them to the administrative offices in the first floor. They pass by two brawny vampires whose similar facial expressions remind Cutler of Kane. They are dragging something downstairs, something that at a closer look reveals itself to be Tom. He is battered and bruised but predictably not bleeding. He raises his head and his eyes meet Hal’s for a moment. 

“Traitor,” Tom spits, wriggles in the hold of his escorts and lunges at Hal. “Traitor! How could you? You bloody traitor!”

The vampires hold him in place, heads lowered reverently before Hal but eyes burning with contemptuous distrust. Nobody here is happy to see Lord Hal back.

Hal looks Tom over, his face displaying a mixture of weariness and mild irritation. 

“Why?” Tom growls. “Tell me why.”

“Life’s full of surprises, Thomas. Most of them unpleasant.”

“Hal, don’t do this.”

Hal sighs theatrically.

“Why does everybody keep saying that? Like it’s going to change something. My mind’s made up. Deal with it.”

“I was right then,” Tom snarls. “You are a dickhead.”

One of the escorts socks him in the jaw and tells him to keep his mouth shut. Tom’s lips curve into spiteful smile. He hollows his cheeks and suddenly spits blood in Hal’s face. Cutler shoves Hal aside automatically, and the blood sprays his shirt, but doesn’t reach the skin. The vampires knee Tom in the stomach. He collapses on his knees, breathing heavily.

Hal calmly hands Cutler the baby basket and takes a few steps in Tom’s direction. Cutler has no idea how he manages to look so stately in his funny old-fashioned clothes and that classy but out-of-place jacket over them. The vampires are holding Tom’s shoulders firmly, their shoes planted over his legs so that he can’t get up. Hal tilts Tom’s chin up with his fingers and wipes the blood off his mouth with a handkerchief. Tom gives him a look of pure loathing. 

Hal turns away without a word and continues walking up the stairs. Cutler trots after him, afraid to look back.

“Is that okay with you?” he asks Milo because he is honestly curious why a lyco is working for the Old Ones. “You’re the same species.”

“Killing vampires seems to agree with you just fine,” Milo notes. “We all do what we must to survive.”

“Well said,” Hal comments.

Milo leaves them in one of the offices and promises to inform them when Mr Snow arrives. Cutler puts the baby basket on the desk (it’s heavier than it looks, as is Eve herself; what do they feed her? Bricks?) and drops himself on the settee by the wall. There is a small palm tree in a vat in the corner of the room. It looks plastic but it isn’t. 

“Does it bother you?” Cutler asks cautiously. “What he called you.”

“Should it?”

“Tom’s your friend. Was your friend.”

Hal busies himself obsessively straightening out the stationery. Pens, rulers, scissors, paper-cutters. He glances at Nick briefly and begins sorting a batch of coloured paperclips. Green to green, pink to pink, yellow to yellow.

“What is it that you suspect me of, Cutler?”

“Nothing!”

“Don’t get me wrong. Tom is a wonderful person. But he’s a dreadful idealist. He only sees the best in people and when that image crumbles, he is left with nothing.”

“You only see the worst,” Cutler mutters. It earns him a derisive look.

“No need to reduce me to your level, Nick. I’m a realist. Look at her.” He taps his fingers on the handle of the baby basket. “Ostensibly we do all we can in the future – and yet, you see how she turns out. Ruthless, unprincipled, prepared to cross every line, to sacrifice anyone. That’s the greater good for you. I’d understand her if she’d only wanted to survive. She’d be human then.”

Cutler snorts.

“And your idea of humanizing her involves leaving her to grow up under Mr Snow’s wing?”

Hal relocates to the settee and stills, his head tilted back against the wall. Cutler expects questions or scathing remarks, reminders that Cutler doesn’t have to be here, that it’s his _choice_ (hello, irony). After a few minutes of unbreakable silence Cutler slides on the floor and places his hands on Hal’s knees. As he trails them upwards, he is eerily reminded of Hal in the chair, spitting curses alternated with supplication. They all have monsters inside them, but Hal is the only one Cutler knows who makes such a drama out of it.

“We’ve got some unfinished business to take care of, haven’t we?” Cutler murmurs.

Hal doesn’t acknowledge him in any other way but with a slight, barely perceptible nod. Cutler’s fingers glide towards his fly, pull the zipper down. Hal’s eyes bore into him; it’s his turn to feel nervous. Hunger burns at the back of his throat. He thinks distractedly that Milo could at least offer them a decanter. And new clothes because you can’t present the most important vampire in the world with the most important baby in the world wearing rags. They should put it on the list of their demands.

Hal’s skin is hot and dry. He keeps silent, nearly prompting Cutler to ask if he’s boring him, but then a soft sigh escapes his lips, and Cutler knows that he is doing at least one thing right. In the grand scheme of things lately this is an achievement.

The silence in the room is thick, interrupted only by the quiet sounds of grudging pleasure Hal makes as Cutler’s mouth slides up and down his length. Cutler used to be rubbish at this; Hal taught him, and taught him well. He puts that skill to use now, tuning out the rest of the world, wishing to elicit a more eloquent response. 

Hal’s hips twitch. He mutters something that could be a curse or an order to get a move on, which Cutler interprets as an incentive to kick it up a notch. His movements are rushed and he doesn’t bother with most of their clothes (one never knows who else might interrupt). He straddles Hal and slides onto him without further ado. He winces because the sensation is uncomfortable, and he is hungry and he hasn’t slept for centuries and it’s _Hal_ and what’s a little pain against the realization that he does need Hal, always needed him, and this bloody revolution can go hang. But he won’t beg, not anymore.

He grips the back of the settee and rolls his hips, accommodating Hal inside. Hal’s hands are on his hips, gliding higher, fingers skimming over his ribs, nails grazing the skin. Cutler swallows a moan, knots his fingers in Hal’s hair and makes him look up. His motions become more fluid. Hal presses closer, his fist squeezing around Cutler and his teeth raking over the curve of Cutler’s throat. They are not made of glass, they can take so much more than this, do so much more than this. 

Hal’s eyes are black, infinitely hungry. Cutler jerks at the onslaught of pain when Hal’s fangs pierce his skin.

He pushes Hal back, holds him at arm’s length. It’s his moment. He clenches hard around Hal, pulls his moans out of him like sore teeth. He will not let Hal reduce him back to the terrified, insecure mess he was sixty years ago. And he won’t let go of the fact that this man tossed his phone out of a moving car.

Hal gives him a smug, challenging smile. Cutler presses his lips to Hal’s, unable to look at it: it’s hauntingly familiar, and he’s only just started getting used to the new Hal, neurotic and tormented, Tom and Annie’s Hal who doesn’t get jokes and thinks that sorting the washing up liquid by types of aroma is a productive pastime.

Afterwards, Cutler feels spent but instead of languor that usually settles upon him, there is restlessness as if he’s got what he wanted only to discover that he doesn’t want it anymore. He is at a loss: he most definitely still wants Hal, he’s already established that and made peace with it. And yet, the hollow feeling persists. Cutler watches Hal go back to sorting the stationery and thinks that Hal is quite adept at deluding himself, making all those excuses about something else taking the wheel when a cycle ends.

There is only one Hal.

* * *

Cutler catches an hour of sleep. When he wakes up, Hal is dozing in the armchair and there are those much wanted new suits in underdresses hanging from the coat rack. He has no idea who brought them and why, but they are up to his standards and he changes immediately. He wishes he could see himself in the mirror. Finally he feels like himself again. 

In the pale light of morning, the dining-hall on the ground floor looks like a recently cleaned up murder scene. There is no evidence left, no bodies, no blood stains, no tape, but the feeling is there. Cutler supposes it’s appropriate.

He turns on the television and watches the news. Unrest sweeps through the country as rumours of supernatural attacks intensify. Rook’s department must be overwhelmed because they don’t seem to be covering it up as effectively as they are supposed to. No one says the v-word, but it’s clear that a lot of people are thinking it. There are mentions of black eyes and crucifixes leaving burns on the attackers’ skin. The revolution advances with giant strides, it seems. Cutler gulps down nervously when the newscaster announces the upcoming live interview with the Prime Minister.

Would Snow collect the War Child first or is making his campaign official more important?

The screen ripples. Cutler braces himself for another confrontation, but the War Child merely stares at him from the telly.

“Did you help Alex to find the ring?” he asks by way of greeting.

“I did my part. I warned you, didn’t I?”

It’s no use arguing with her. Cutler admires her a little: she’s dead and she’s done more damage from the grave than he ever could.

“Do we know each other in the future? Have you got a grudge against me or something?”

“I’ve got a grudge against all vampires. It’s kind of what I’m for.”

That’s bleak, he thinks. But it’s a purpose. At least she’s got one.

“Well, you haven’t achieved anything except giving Hal a nudge in the wrong direction.”

“I’m trying to be optimistic. Defense mechanism.”

Cutler ignores the turn of phrase. He would like to ignore the entire conversation if possible but something tells him it’s their last one. Today, after all, is April 11.

“It’s stupid though,” he says petulantly. “Even if she dies, you’ve already lived. It doesn’t cancel out the things you saw and the things you did.” He doesn’t know that much about posthumous time-travel, but even if she disappears completely after the baby dies, she will still have existed at some point, if only in his and Annie’s memories. She will still have been the sum of threats and lies and truths she had told, events she had been through, lives she had taken and saved. “Do I die?” he asks. “In the future.” It’s something he has been meaning to ask her all along.

“Everyone dies eventually,” Eve says. “I think dying _for_ something is better than _because of_ something. To answer your question: yes, we do know each other. No, you haven’t done anything to me personally.”

The image changes back to the newscast. Cutler looks down at the immaculate, spotless floor beneath his feet and almost imagines that he can see his reflection.

He is not a doubting man. He is the man who can meticulously plan world domination one minute and turn on his entire race the next because some shriveled up mummy forgot his name. So it takes him all of thirty seconds to make up his mind. 

* * *

The guard at the meat storage locker is young and impressionable and reminds Cutler of that lop-eared Welsh chatterbox – whatshisname – Dewi. His partner, he says, is on a smoke break, which is great because historical things are happening and maybe he’ll let Dewi 2.0 slip away to sneak a peek at the Old Ones later when they arrive.

There are only two people Cutler can stand listening to indefinitely: himself and Hal (in that order). He’s got a stake hidden inside his jacket; too bad he can’t use it. He smiles and nods and does his best to convince the lad they are friends now. 

There is a commotion by the front door. They can’t see anything from where they are, but there comes the unmistakable clang of the lattice being lifted. 

Dewi 2.0 fidgets. His partner still hasn’t returned, and there they might be opening the door for Mr Snow himself. Cutler pats him on the shoulder and urges him to go and take a look. He promises to watch over the dog. It’s just a few minutes. It can’t hurt.

Thank God for stupid and unreliable people, Cutler thinks as he opens the meat storage locker door a moment later.

It is dark and cold inside. His breath comes out in puffs of steam. He looks around, trying to find something alive among the carcasses hanging from the hooks on the ceiling.

“Tom.” What he does goes against every bone in his body. He takes out the stake and holds it in front of him. “I come in peace. See?”

From the corner of his eye, he can see something moving. Tom hobbles up to him. His fingers close around the stake – and he slams Cutler against the wall, the pointy end about to plunge into Cutler’s heart. Nick thrashes, gripped with fear, and squeezes out:

“Tom, please! I’m not your enemy!”

“What’ve you done to Hal?” Tom growls.

The thought that _anyone_ , much less Cutler, could do anything to Hal is both laughable and flattering.

“It wasn’t me,” Cutler protests, trying to sound calm. Tom is ready to listen; hopefully, there is still time to change his mind about the staking. Cutler tells him about Future Eve’s meddling, omitting the Adam-related bits, no need to tackle that just yet.

“It don’t make no sense,” Tom says. 

“Hal very seldom makes any sense,” Cutler mutters. “But look, what I see in all this is an opportunity. Snow is coming here. Maybe he’s already here. This is the chance we’ve been waiting for. We can kill him.”

“You and me?”

Cutler amends:

“Mostly you.”

“Without proper weapons? Without Annie and Alex?”

Cutler agrees that they should be here, but they’re not – they won’t be unless Call-Me-Maybe cracks – and if Snow isn’t taken care of now, then the Prime Minister is toast and the whole country, the whole world along with him. When he puts it like that, it sounds a bit ridiculous but no less scary.

“How do I know this ain’t a trap?” The tip of the stake presses harder against Cutler’s chest. “You do everything Hal tells you to, and Hal does everything Mr Snow tells him to.”

Cutler rolls his eyes.

“You’re already trapped, aren’t you? If I wanted to kill you, I’d call those Bruce Willis knock-offs that brought you here. I most certainly would not give you a weapon to kill me with.”

Tom glances at the stake in his hand. Cutler imagines dying in a room full of raw meat – definitely not his idea of going out with a bang. Fortunately, Tom seems to be inclined to give him another chance. He steps down and twirls the stake in his hand like a gunslinger in a Western.

“Thank you,” says Cutler. He smoothes down the front of his shirt automatically and inches towards the door.

“I got a thing to ask you,” Tom says. “Back at the restaurant, I know you lied about a lotta things.” Seriously? _Now?_ “’S all right, I ain’t that slow. But there was one thing… about Allison’s parents. You said: imagine if your daughter brought you home. I imagined. I don’t think they’d like that. So that was a lie too.”

Tom’s uncanny ability to switch between the fierce vampire slayer mode and the lost puppy mode will never cease to amaze Cutler. He fumbles for words and says awkwardly:

“I told you what I thought you needed to hear at the moment. But Tom, I’ve never met her parents. I don’t know what they’re like. And even if they hate you, what does it matter? Rachel’s Dad hated me. I still married her.”

For a moment he feels really proud. _That_ was an achievement; everything that came after was just glamour. This is why he needs this chance now. He is not Hal’s dog, he isn’t going to hide under Hal’s porch because he loves him. (He should really stop referencing every single film he’s ever seen.) Maybe he will lose Hal forever; maybe he will lose his life. But somebody will remember him – and frankly, he’s just itching to see Mr Snow’s face when his world domination scheme goes belly up.

“Let’s do this,” Tom says. 

Leaving the freezer feels like walking into summer. Cutler shivers. At least he’s already dead; how did Tom not turn into an icicle?

They are met by Dewi 2.0’s esteemed smoking partner. Before he can call for reinforcements, Tom lunges at him and shoves him into the meat locker. Even with a twisted ankle and countless bruises, he moves quickly and efficiently. They slam the door shut and steal along the corridor. The lobby is full of vampires. They must be the local elite because Cutler doesn’t recognize anyone from Snow’s entourage here. Whoever they are, they successfully comprise a small but ferocious army. The prospect of getting out of this mess alive seems less and less likely.

The vampires seem to be heading to the dining-hall. Tom asks Cutler if there is any other way in. Cutler nods. There is one through the kitchen.

God forbid they get there, of course. As soon as they reach the kitchen, they are intercepted by Milo. The guy is seriously everywhere. He seems to be asking for his other eye to be removed.

“This is getting awfully repetitive,” Milo remarks.

Tom charges at him with a loud roar. This is personal. Cutler doesn’t know – and doesn’t want to know – what Milo has been doing to him. Perhaps it’s a werewolf thing. Tom seems to have been brought up with a firm inherent belief that all werewolves are friends and all vampires are enemies. Meeting both Hal and Milo must have been quite a shock to him.

The anticipated Bruce Willis clones spring out at Cutler. He barely dodges. He is unarmed, having had time to find only one stake. Tom notices that and throws Cutler his stake. Cutler barely manages to catch it, but he puts it to use promptly, ramming it into the heart of one of the Bruces with both hands.

Milo pushes Tom onto the kitchen table. Tom reaches out for the cutlery, pulls a knife from the stand and slashes at Milo. He misses; Milo swings back with a curse. It occurs to Cutler that Milo hasn’t been going for the kill all this time. Perhaps there are still some things he is not prepared to do, not even for Mr Snow.

More vampires pour into the kitchen. Tom attacks one of them and swings the knife against his throat, leaving a deep scarlet gash. The man drops on the floor, clutching at the wound. Cutler stumbles over the clothes of the first Bruce Willis; the second Bruce grabs him and bangs his head against the wall so hard that starbursts go off before Cutler’s eyes. He twists the stake out of Cutler’s grasp and presses it to the back of his neck. A restaurant kitchen is only a step up from the meat storage locker, and Cutler still isn’t too eager to die.

“Give it up, Tom,” Milo says. “We’ve got your mate cornered.”

“He ain’t my mate,” Tom says.

“Then you don’t mind if we dust him?”

Cutler grits his teeth. He would have done the same; he just didn’t expect this from Tom. In hindsight, he should have. Tom _is_ a vampire hunter after all. 

The knife falls on the floor with a loud clank. The pressure at the back of Cutler’s neck disappears. He turns around to see Tom holding his hands up. At this moment, even though things aren’t looking up, Tom is his favourite person in the world.

“You’re a traitor and a coward, is what you are,” Tom hisses at Milo. “And you’re gonna lose.”

Milo’s lips twitch as if he can’t make up his mind whether to be insulted or amused.

“You are so naïve,” he says. “Betrayal isn’t always an act of cowardice. And even so, you’re not one to lecture me about where my loyalties should lie when you yourself consort with vampires.”

“I ain’t helping no one take over the world that don’t belong to them.”

With that, Tom leaps at Milo, pushes him out of the way and charges towards the door that leads to the dining-hall. Cutler collects himself and follows him.

“Hal!” Tom shouts.

Milo catches him, wraps his arms around him, restraining him, and clamps his hand over Tom’s mouth. Cutler freezes at the sight of what is going on in the hall. Somebody is holding him in place, but he isn’t inclined to move as it is. The room is chock-full of vampires. There is no way they could even get to Snow.

“Quiet, boy,” Milo whispers to Tom. “Bear witness. This is not betrayal. It’s evolution.”

* * *

 _How to Cutler_  
Written by N. Cutler, your friendly neighbourhood saviour of babies and the failed future Overlord of Brazil

1) Be a loser.  
2) Get vamped.  
3) Be a loser with ambitions.  
4) Deposit all your trust in the Bank of Yorke; go bankrupt in sixty years.  
5) Come up with a cool plan.  
6) See the plan declared uncool by someone who was born a billion years before the letters required to write the word “cool” were invented.  
7) Face Heel Turn.  
8) Misery and angst and woe.  
9) “I’m going slightly mad.”  
10) ???  
11) Profit.

The complete set includes pie charts and a diorama.

* * *

Mr Snow stands in the middle of the room like a monument to himself. The tables have been moved together in a large square as if for a banquet, the seats already taken by the guests. They all devour him with their eyes.

Hal is on his knees in front of Snow, Eve resting in his arms. His head is bowed deferentially. Snow brushes his fingers against Hal’s cheek. The gesture is both patronizing and implicitly tender, almost fatherly. 

“Today is the day of celebration,” he speaks in his bored, ingratiating voice. Cutler is reminded of the way Snow’s hand felt across his face. It makes him want to retch. “It is the day our brother came back into the fold. And we shall stir from our slumber. _Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword._ ”

The basics of being a pretentious wanker: always quote the Bible. Or Shakespeare. Or mix.

Cutler asks himself why he didn’t just run away when he had the chance. Maybe it’s because he is an idiot. Maybe he wanted one scheme of his to work. Maybe because he remembers the look on Annie’s face when he said Eve wasn’t her daughter.

Snow looks down at Hal and holds out his hands. Hal raises his head slowly. From where he is standing, Cutler can see his face. It’s unreadable. He moves like a zombie. Perhaps Snow does have power over him. It’s a sickening sight.

Tremors travel through the building. The big crystal chandelier on the ceiling quivers, jingling and clanking softly. 

The doors fly open with such force that one of them is torn off the hinges and collapses on the floor. Some of the guests jump up, others simply look around, bewildered. The ghosts are marching in.

The guards are at the ready. Snow placates them with a lazy gesture. He seems to be quite taken by sight of Annie with her ice-blue eyes and the fierce curve of his mouth.

“Hal,” she says coldly. “Give her back to me.”

Hal doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at her. Mr Snow smiles, all blackened teeth and carefully measured venom.

“Annie. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You and your people have made worthy opponents, but it’s time to cast your weapons aside. I had considered letting you keep her, but Hal here has been telling me interesting things about your household. Ghosts from the future, accidental murders. Quite an unhealthy environment for a baby to grow up in. I shall be taking her, but you are welcome to stay with us of course. There is no defender more fierce than a mother to her child. You put up a good fight, but you lost. Bow out gracefully.”

“Funny,” Hal murmurs. “I was about to give you the same piece of advice.”

He catches Tom’s eyes and winks at him. Raises his hand. Something slides out of his sleeve into his hand. A paper-cutter from the office. One swift cut, and the scent of freshly spilt blood hits Cutler’s nostrils. A sense of numb relief settles over him.

Annie screams. It’s the most blood-curdling sound he has ever heard. She falls to her knees, tears gushing from her eyes.

Snow cries out as well, and swipes Hal across the face, rage twisting his composed features. Hal drops Eve’s body. Snow pulls him up by the front of his shirt and hisses:

“Do you think this is it? Do you think you’ve got your victory, child? Look around you!”

“Actually,” Hal says, “I do. I think you’ve let that prophecy get a bit out of hand. I don’t know about you, but what I see is a room full of vampires who believe that her death is their destruction.”

Cutler has to keep himself from gaping at Hal. That is actually… a pretty good plan. Especially since Annie’s reaction confirms that the baby is the real War Child.

The guests stare at the murder scene in shock. Within a few moments, most of them scramble up on their feet and attempt to leave. Milo barks orders, which Cutler doesn’t hear. Tom breaks free and socks Milo in the mouth. The vampire guards lunge at them, fangs bared, fists raised.

Cutler wriggles out of Bruce’s grasp. A vampire flies by and tumbles down on one of the tables that collapses under his weight. Cutler picks up a long wood chip and drives it into Bruce’s heart.

“What, you’re one of the good guys again?” Alex quips.

“Let’s say I’m not incapable of doing good things,” he answers.

Chaos breaks out. Some try to run, stumbling over each other in the process. Tom punches an attacker in the mouth, knocking out his teeth, but not before the fangs rake down Tom’s skin, splitting it, and poisoned blood seeps down the vampire’s throat. The man screams and thrashes in agony.

Mr Snow’s eyes dart quickly about the room, surveying the pandemonium. He returns his attention to Hal.

“This is very unfortunate,” he says. One of his attendants hands him a stake.

Cutler is too far from them. Even if he were closer, he is hardly the type to catch a bullet for someone. Even if that someone is Hal. His insides wrench with fear.

The stake comes down.

It is a hair’s breadth away from Hal’s heart when Hal is pried from Snow’s grasp and flung aside. He lands on his back near Annie who is still petrified and whose eyes are fixed on Eve’s lifeless body. The stake slips out of Snow’s hand and turns against him. He tries to move, but Alex is holding him immobile. She moves her hand, driving the stake into his chest.

Snow jerks, inhales noisily and laughs.

“Missed the heart.”

He struggles against her, moving forward inch by inch. 

“Annie!” Alex calls. “A little help here! Annie, I can’t hold him!”

Cutler makes a go for Hal. A female vampire knocks him off his feet before he can reach him. She is small and agile, which is worse than Bruce the brick shithouse. She moves quickly and assertively, making it difficult for him to block her blows. They grapple for the discarded wood chip. She lands on top of him; by a fluke, he punches her in the face. Her head lolls; she collects herself, grips a fistful of his hair and slams his head into the floor. He can feel blood trickling down his temple.

He bucks underneath her, struggling to throw her off. She grabs a hold of the wood chip and attempts to bring it down on him. He catches her wrist and bites hard, tearing the veins and the sinew out with his teeth, feeling the joints break with a wet crunch. She screams. He snatches the wood chip away from her and plunges it into her body. He misses the heart, but she seems to be sufficiently incapacitated. He pushes her off, pulls the weapon out and viciously drives it home again.

His hands tremble. He wipes the blood off his face before it obscures his vision and turns around.

The dining-hall is almost empty now. Annie remains where she is, pale, transparent, an echo of her former self. Snow is still struggling – and winning – against Alex who looks like she is about to burst into a pencil of molecules and drift away. Milo is bleeding from a gut wound on the floor, Tom standing over him. The remaining vampires are oddly indecisive.

The sound of footsteps makes Cutler turn his head towards the door.

He sees Yvonne, walking calmly towards the fray. Her face is blank. He spots Adam’s ring hanging on a cord around her neck and a set of wires wrapped around her arm. There is a small detonator clutched in her hand, and Cutler is startled by the realization of what lurks under her old-fashioned mantlet.

Alex breaks her hold over Snow with a pained gasp. He lurches forward, but his way is blocked by Yvonne.

“Run!” Alex shouts.

Cutler gets up. He looks over his shoulder to see Hal stagger after him. Mr Snow makes an effort to push Yvonne away. She cups his face with her hand, and he freezes. He stares at her like he had never seen anything more beautiful and more repulsive in his life. Cutler can only imagine how a man like Snow feels love and desire.

Her finger slides over the detonator.

Cutler cries out Hal’s name, urging him to hurry up. Something whooshes past him. Tom makes a strange gurgling noise and almost bumps into the wall, but continues running.

Cutler stops for a moment, his eyes wide with panic and fixed on Hal.

Someone grabs him around the shoulders roughly. His body jerks, and he feels like he is at once flying and falling apart. Dizziness comes over him; for a moment it is as if he doesn’t exist at all. Then he meets the hard surface of the roadside, and the deafening roar of the explosion crashes over him. Tom is sprawled on the ground, Cutler on top of him, Alex still clutching his shoulders.

She pulls away and gets up. Cutler forces himself to look back at the burning building. His vision goes double.

“Hal!” he shouts. “Hal!” He looks up at Alex and doesn’t know what he wants to hear: an explanation, words of reassurance, anything. “Where’s Hal?”

Alex’s attention is focused on the restaurant. She looks smaller somehow, paler.

“There’s no one else,” she murmurs, almost too softly for him to hear. She sounds no less shocked than he feels. “It’s just us.”


	8. Our Hello-Goodbye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer** : Being Human belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. Epigraph and title from “I Need Some Fine Wine, and You, You Need to Be Nicer” by The Cardigans. Quote from "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare.  
> A/N: Oh God, it's over! I don't think I can quite believe it just yet. Don't think I'd have reached the end of this if not for [shirogiku](http://archiveofourown.org/users/shirogiku/pseuds/shirogiku), [non_canonical](http://archiveofourown.org/users/non_canonical/pseuds/non_canonical) and [watchtowerhere](http://archiveofourown.org/users/watchtowerhere). Thank you, guys!

The devastating truth of her words takes a moment to sink in. Cutler feels faint and tells himself it’s because of the wound on his head and the rent-a-ghosting and the fucking explosion.

“Oh God,” Alex whimpers. “Tom!”

Cutler turns his head.

“Sh-shit!”

Tom is bleeding from a gash on the neck. For the thousandth time: people around Cutler must stop getting stabbed, beaten or blown up! How long does it take one to bleed out from a neck wound? Five minutes? Ten? He snaps at Alex to get him some gauze or any clean bandage she can find, and holds the wound with his hand, trying not to think about the sepsis and other unpleasant things that can happen to an almost human being with a hole in his neck. His skin is melting. He grits his teeth. His eyes water. He fails to hold in a pained outcry.

Tom’s lips tremble. He is trying to speak; Cutler can’t unclench his jaws to tell him to stop. Tom makes a wheezy sound that comes out almost like Hal’s name – but no, don’t, please, Cutler thinks, because if Tom does, if he mentions Hal again, Cutler will let go of his fucking wound and let the blood flow, and where the hell is Alex?

Tears splatter down his cheeks. How long does it take for the acid to eat through the flesh and mix with the blood? How long until the toxin is transported in the bloodstream and his insides start cooking? The acrid smell makes him gag.

Alex pops out of nowhere, cradling a load of bandages with one arm and holding a bottle of water in the other hand. She puts it down on the ground, swats Cutler’s hand away and begins bandaging Tom’s neck. Cutler’s breath comes out in ragged gasps alternated with sobs. He manages to unscrew the tap and pours water on his hand. Half of it splashes wastefully over his knee. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, give me that!” Alex snaps.

He remembers reading somewhere that it takes fifteen minutes to rinse an acid burn. Werewolf blood probably requires as much time, but he doesn’t have time to spare. His fingers are numb with pain. He can barely feel the water as it runs over his skin, raw-red and blistered. Alex pours the last of it out and rent-a-ghosts to get another bottle.

“Where is everyone?” Cutler asks. He can’t manage any inflection; his voice comes out disinterested and flat. “You’d think with an explosion like that there’d be coppers and firemen and whatnot.”

“There is a crowd at the end of the street, blocking the road.” More water. He winces and takes a shaky breath. “I think they’re vampires.”

Cutler closes his eyes for a moment. The pain burns all over him, even beneath his eyelids, searing hot. He careens forth, brings his hand up to his nosebridge to pinch it, and takes it away immediately, remembering the toxin. He doesn’t know how clean his skin is yet. He doesn’t feel clean.

“Call Rook,” Alex says.

He snaps his head up.

“What?”

“He should know what to do, he’s the bloody government, isn’t he?” She looks at Tom over her shoulder. “He needs to go to a hospital. Rook wants you to help them, right? So let him help us first.”

Cutler shakes his head mutely. He can’t imagine settling business right now. He mutters that he hasn’t got his phone on him because… because Hal… because Hal–

He can’t speak past the name.

Alex shoves her phone into his hand and tells him to stop being a pansy. He barely resists the urge to throw it at her head. It will do no good, what with her being a ghost, and that’s probably the thing that stops him.

He gets up, barely able to stand straight. Doubles over like a question mark, wondering how he got to survive. She must be thinking the same. She might even be wishing he were someone else, and he hates himself for not wishing the same thing because no matter how much it hurts now, he just isn’t that kind of man.

Alex grips him by the shoulders and gives him a shake.

“They don’t want Hal, they want you! If you don’t do it now, I swear I will rent-a-ghost you to bloody Kilimanjaro and drop you into the crater!”

He’s got no idea if she is capable of that, if it’s physically possible. 

“So do it,” he says, but it’s not a challenge. He feels weary, worn thin, and he drops on his knees in front of her. It’s a little melodramatic. He looks up at her and hates her. “Hey, maybe this _is_ your unfinished business. Do it! End this! Get rid of me.”

He’s not the kind of man to give his life for someone he cares about, but he is the kind of man to throw it away on a whim or to prove a point.

Alex looks down at him coldly – and the next thing he feels is her fist connecting with his face. She hits like a truck or at least a minivan running you down.

“You did this,” she says. “You brought this about. This is all your fault.” At this moment, even if she doesn’t know everything, she views him as the heir to the cause of Herrick, Wyndham, Griffin, and many others. “I don’t want my Dad and my brothers to live in your world. So here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna get up and phone Rook, and you two will fix this bloody mess, or so help me!”

He swallows a lump in his throat. His nose is bleeding, but he doesn’t dare wipe the blood off in case some of Tom’s remains on his hands.

He nods. Fumbles for the note in his pocket and punches in the number.

“It’s Cutler,” he says. “I need… we need help. Medical assistance.” He looks around for the name of the street. It hits him that he’s got no idea where they are. “The building,” he says. “The building’s just collapsed. Bring some blood.”

“Cutler!” Alex cries out. He almost drops the phone. “I can’t feel his heart!”

He darts up to Tom’s prone body and checks the vitals. Nothing. He was fine a minute ago, and now it’s nothing. 

“He needs to go to a fucking hospital,” Cutler mutters. Alex looks at him like he is an utter moron. He frantically drags the basics of CPR out of his memory. “Can you–?”

She stares at him and shakes her head vigorously.

“Annie said never with a living thing. It’s about the only rule.”

“Does he look like a living thing to you?” Cutler snaps.

Alex’s face contorts with something close to fear. He flashes back to the night he killed her. She had the same look on her face, but now it is somehow more pronounced. Back then it was all about her mouth, open wide and pleading, her tears and her body strained in a struggle against the restraints holding her; now it’s all in the eyes, which makes it terrifying.

She places her arms across Tom. Cutler lets go. Alex squeezes her eyes shut. The vein on her temple is bulging. She disappears, and reappears about a foot to the left, her arms still stretched. She gasps breathlessly:

“I can’t… I can’t do it!” She crawls over to Tom and takes over the heart massage. She seems almost professional. “Ventilation! I don’t breathe!”

Cutler pinches Tom’s nose with trembling fingers and leans into him.

“Two breaths, one second each,” Alex instructs. 

He covers Tom’s mouth with his, counts and blows, pulls away and lets her resume the process. Rinse and repeat. He doesn’t have to breathe to survive, but he can produce airflow. He’s not that dead yet.

“How long’s it been?” Alex asks urgently.

He glances at the display of the phone. Two minutes. Three. Four. He doesn’t remember when they started. Feels more like two or three hours.

Alex swears under her breath. It’s too long as it is.

He looks at her hands, arranged on Tom’s chest one over the other, and gets the weirdest idea.

“What about direct massage? It’s more effective, isn’t it?”

He’s seen a few assorted medical dramas.

“Are you saying we should cut him open?” Alex exclaims, vaguely appalled.

“You can go through solid objects, can’t you?” He’s had it with tag questions. She can do it, he knows that, she knows that, so he’d rather she stopped mucking about and got to it.

“He’s not an object!” Alex protests.

“His thorax is, I assure you. Do it!”

Alex is ghostly pale, which is ironic as hell, only he’s not in the right state of mind to appreciate it. She presses down on Tom’s chest, her eyes screwed shut and her face scrunched up in frantic concentration. Cutler opens his mouth to hurry her up, though it’s redundant. With a dose of shock and admiration, he watches Alex’s hands sink slowly into Tom’s thorax as if becoming submerged under the water. The sight is disturbing in its unnaturalness, yet morbidly fascinating.

Alex opens her eyes. He can tell by the tension in her shoulders that she has got a hold of the heart and is working on it. Neither of them knows enough about resuscitation to classify this specifically as direct or indirect heart massage, and she pauses every now and then to allow Cutler to do his part. For all he knows, they might be wasting their time or inflicting even more damage.

It feels like it lasts forever. At some point, Alex goes still; then a short, breathless laugh escapes her lips. Her mouth twists with surprised relief.

“It’s beating,” she exhales, and half-sobs, half-laughs as she pulls her hands out. 

Cutler reclines on the ground next to Tom, propped up on his elbows. Suddenly the light is too bright and the sounds are too loud, and he wonders if he has been poisoned after all. A grey Lexus whooshes into the street, moving so fast that its wheels barely touch the asphalt. An ambulance follows in its wake. Cutler picks himself up and watches Rook emerge from the car in his impeccable grey suit that surreally matches the colour of the car. Now that their after-action healing drama is over, any and all strength drains out of Cutler. He can’t stop blinking as he watches Rook approach and the paramedics transfer Tom onto a gurney and load him into the car. The sight of that hurts his eyes. Everything hurts, and his head is buzzing. One of the paramedics draws closer to him and starts saying something; Cutler can’t hear him past the hectic noise in his mind. The man takes him by the wrist cautiously and lifts his hand to take a look at it. Cutler lets him.

* * *

There is a sticky spot of blood on the asphalt where Tom lay. The area is cordoned off; Rook’s boys will probably pin the explosion on some terrorist organization.

Cutler looks at the blood stain. It seems to throb and grow, making everything red. Alex walks past him, and he remembers the taste of her blood, though of course it could be anyone’s blood.

“Mr Cutler.”

He looks up, meets Rook’s alien eyes. Eyes this blue are unnatural. Perhaps he’s got a surplus of colouring agent in his system.

“When you and I had our little chat about removing the Old Ones from power, I didn’t mean that you should do it quite so… loudly.”

Cutler fumbles for a reply. Alex exclaims indignantly:

“Oh, you, ungrateful bastard! They were planning to munch down the Prime Minister in front of everybody! Didn’t see you doing anything to try and stop them.” She punches Cutler in the shoulder; he all but jumps. “Say it!”

“They were going to kill the Prime Minister,” Cutler says with a tired sigh. “We had to act quickly.”

“Not quite how I put it,” Alex mutters.

“Oh,” Rook says together with her. “That explains it.” The smile he gives Cutler makes it look like he is dealing with a severe toothache. “I think that perhaps we should discuss the logistics of our collaboration.”

Cutler’s eyes are fixed on Rook’s neck framed by a pristine white shirt collar. Hal could probably drink without spilling a drop over the fabric.

Rook takes a wary step back. Cutler leans forth, captivated, his throat tight with ravenous hunger.

“H-have you got any blood?” he forces himself to say. Except the one in your veins, he thinks. There’s a whole city of blood around them, and the thought is becoming more and more obtrusive.

“Ah, yes. But perhaps–”

“Ask him about my body,” Alex says.

Cutler gapes at her. “What, now?”

“Yeah. It’s as good a time as any.”

Rook watches him curiously.

“I assume one of your Type Ones is here.” His apprehensive look sweeps around Cutler, as if trying to pinpoint the ghost’s location. “Anyway, as I was saying–”

Cutler can only take so many broken records at once. He grips the lapels of Rook’s jacket and pushes him against the car, fangs bared in an angry snarl.

“Her name is Alex,” he says. “I killed her at the Shivargo night club in Barry the day before you took down my videos. We’ve got reasons to believe you tidied up after me. So where’s her body?”

Rook tenses and stays motionless, but he is not frightened. Cutler almost wishes he were; fear is a well-known red flag for vampires, and Cutler is just itching for an excuse.

“Unless there has been a delay in transportation,” Rook says, “the remains are most likely with the family. This is how we handle such things. We send the carcass off with an appropriate cover story. By now, I believe, it may have already been interred.”

Cutler glances at Alex. All visible signs of rage have drained out of her. She purses her lips, which gives her a slightly offended look.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Cutler prods hesitantly.

“Yeah, but… It all happened without me.” She shakes her head. “What’s my cover story then?”

Cutler takes a step back and renders the question. He has to admit that Alex’s timing is quite good: taking care of her business has alleviated the thirst a little. He wonders if she has stepped in on purpose.

“Alex,” Rook repeats, searching his memory. “Barry.” He narrows his eyes for a moment, then supplies: “Drowning.”

“Drowning!?” she exclaims. A wave of her hand, and Rook is flung against the car, the wind knocked out of him. He blinks rapidly, colour drained from his face.

“She’s not taking it well,” Cutler says.

“I can see that.”

“Why are you making such a big deal out of this?” Cutler asks Alex. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Non-violent. Normal.”

She throws her hands up, balls them into fists and groans.

“Not like this! It’s all done now, it’s in the past, but I’m still stuck here! With you! With him!” She points at Rook in distress. “With all of this! I have to watch people die, and the only one who can still see me is my fucking _murderer_!” She kicks the car aggressively. Rook starts. “And tell him to fucking look at me when he’s talking! Just because I’m invisible it doesn’t mean I’m not a person!”

She deflates suddenly and stops to look at the car. Cutler imagines that she could, if she wanted to, tear it apart.

“Do me a favour,” he tells Rook. “There’s two of us here, so could you please acknowledge her presence?” She’s going ballistic, he thinks pathetically, help me. 

“Of course.” Rook looks around. Cutler subtly points to where Alex is standing. She seems to have calmed down already, but Cutler still inches away from her. Just in case. “I do apologise.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Alas, it takes time to move on from one’s preconceptions.” Another quick, sharp smile before Rook schools his features into a sympathetic expression. “I know you have been through quite a lot. Do not think for a moment that the Department and the nation will forget what you did today. However, the revolution has not been canceled. If anything, it progresses at a far greater speed now.”

Cutler catches himself thinking that Rook looks kind of maniacal when he gets on his favourite horse. Then again, Cutler used to talk to a wolf puppet, so he’s definitely not one to get judgmental about the man’s antics. A psychologist would have a field day with both of them.

“Pretty sure I’m not the only vampire eager to fill Mr Snow’s shoes,” Cutler says. “Not that I am. Eager, that is.”

“I can hardly find another suitable candidate on such a short notice,” Rook says impatiently. “Your undeniable merit is that you keep in touch with the world and do not underestimate humanity.”

Alex snickers at that. Cutler flashes her a sour look. She makes a show of zipping her mouth shut.

Rook goes on, spinning some bullshit about personal sacrifice and mutual gain and whatnot. They should have a BS face-off. 

When Rook mentions the greater good, Cutler discovers he has got a new berserk button.

“Don’t talk to me about the fucking greater good!” he snarls. “People die because of it. I’m not eager to reach an early grave.”

Alex mutters that he is in fact about half a century too late, which is rubbish, he’s only ninety, humans do live that long.

“People die because of many things,” Rook reasons. “And _for_ many things.” He and Eve would have got along swimmingly. “In fact, most of the time it doesn’t matter what you do or how hard you try or what extremes you go to. People still die. What matters is not to let them die in vain.”

“Cheesy,” is Alex’s verdict, “but what he said.”

Cutler gives both of them a scathing look.

“You’d better not be talking about someone I know,” he says. “Now where’s that fucking blood? Or should I start eating people?”

“You could try.” Rook narrows his eyes, reaches into the car and takes out a flask. Nick can smell the blood inside, and it twists his insides into a knot. “When you cut off a hydra’s head, two more will grow in its place. Unless the wound is cauterized.” He hands Cutler the flask. “Would you like to see what is going on? I don’t believe you appreciate the severity of the situation.”

What Cutler would actually like is to punch the annoying bastard in the face, but that doesn’t usually work out for him. Rook starts walking, absurdly assured that Cutler will follow, and Cutler does, against all better judgment. They reach a building at the end of the street and go up to the roof.

“What, you’re gonna push me off if I don’t consent to your little _Machtergreifung_?” Cutler quips.

Rook beckons him closer to the edge. Several streets can be seen from up here, and most of them are swarming with people. 

“News travel very fast,” says Rook. “Local vampires are opposing the remains of the Old Ones’ entourage. There are several fractions that we know of, each of them more dangerous than the other. It was brewing for the past several days. My sources tell me Mr Snow hasn’t left a successor. I’m sure you understand that anarchy is by far more dangerous than any solitary dictator.”

Cutler snickers. Of course he hasn’t left a successor. His successor died with him.

Shell-shocked, Alex watches the boiling rivers of people. The crowd moves in disarray that almost seems staged. It feels as if every vampire in Britain has come to London to be at the epicentre of the upheaval.

Rook shows them the CCTV footage on his mobile phone. Policemen in full protective gear, armed with batons and shields, are pressing an invisible crowd.

“Riots,” Alex whispers. “We did this.”

“We do not normally concern ourselves with internal power struggle among monsters,” says Rook, “but humans are getting caught in the crossfire.” He taps the empty space on the display, confirming that there are vampires lashing out against the police. “The army are on the brink of declaring marshal law.”

If this were America, they would probably be shooting everyone now. That would have actually made things much easier.

Cutler takes a step back. Snow has only been dead for what, an hour? Two hours? Even less, perhaps. How did things escalate so quickly?

“Uh-huh,” he says, and shakes his head frantically. “I’m not…” His throat tightens. It takes a few more attempts to get the words out. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.”

He clings to the last defences available to him. He is a vampire; if anything, he should be down there with his fellow bloodsuckers, not up here, waiting for the Big Brother to make a category traitor out of him. His fingers clench painfully around the flask. Not that he cares that much about other vampires; he just cares even less about the government.

“Mr Cutler!” Rook sounds almost outraged. Well, tough.

Cutler turns around and runs. It hits him all over again that Hal is gone and everything else is gone too and every light at the end of every tunnel is actually an approaching train. He gets downstairs, darts outside and doesn’t look back.

* * *

TEST CARD

Do not adjust your set, normal transmission will resume shortly.

If ever.

* * *

Hiding in a sex shop with Elton John’s _Candle in the Wind_ filtering through the radio speakers in the background is bizarre at best.

“The door was open,” Cutler explains. No, he hasn’t eaten the bloke at the cash register. No, the music wasn’t his choice either. “And you’ve got a lovely view of a gang of chavs looting a liquor shop.”

He points vaguely at the shopwindow. He wants to be looting a liquor shop too, but it’s a first come, first served thing apparently. Right now he is quite content sipping from the flask and feeling sorry for himself.

Alex looks around wistfully. Sex is in the top five of the things she has been deprived of by death, and by Cutler. She is quite vocal about it.

“I thought you wanted power,” she remarks. “You mentioned something about statues in Brazil when you… you know.”

Stuck a tube into her throat and drained her blood. Call a spade a spade.

“Aren’t I allowed to change my mind?”

“Not about this.” She dangles her arms like she doesn’t know what to do with them. “Personally I think both you and Rook are pretty sketchy. But in this case he’s right.”

“Did he put you up to this?” If looks could stake… “You do realise that there’s nothing we could have done differently, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she says. Maybe she means “no”. “So let’s not dwell on what we did and focus on what we should do.”

Cutler scoffs. “Good luck with that.”

He shifts the gauze pads on his fingers, trying to sneak a peek at the burns. He half-expects to see skeletal fingers, Tim Burton style. Perhaps he could win over the vampires by taking his head off and reciting poetry. _These violent delights have violent ends_ , and so on and so forth. It sounds like something Hal would say.

“You saved me,” he says without looking at her. This is something they need to tackle sooner rather than later.

“Not a moment goes by that I don’t beat myself up about it.”

“Why me? Why not Hal?”

Alex huffs in frustration. “I don’t know! I thought Annie would get Hal out.”

Did she see Annie back there? Annie was in no shape to get anyone out, not even herself. 

“What is it with you and Hal anyway?”

He doesn’t want to tell her because she would just simplify it, bring it down to the level of some trashy melodrama, but it’s so much more complicated than that. Or so he would like to believe.

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to be,” he says stubbornly. “I’m an extra in this story, Hal is–”

The shelf lined with multi-coloured vibrators behind Alex trembles. Somehow she manages to look threatening even with such a ridiculous background.

“This is not a film, for fuck’s sake!” she shouts. “Why are you so bloody obsessed with them?”

“Because!” That’s the short answer. She sends an avalanche of magazines tumbling down on him. “Because,” he concedes, “if the film is shitty, you can just blame it on lazy writing or poor acting or low budget. You can laugh it off or stop watching. You can break the door down easily or have a bloody happy ending, and everything serves a point. Everything is a storytelling device. Nothing happens at random.”

Alex snorts bitterly.

“Let me tell you about my happy ending.” Please don’t, he thinks. “I was supposed to travel the world, find a good bloke, become a concert pianist.” He gives her a quizzical look, but relents before she hits him with a bottle of lube. “Instead, my happy ending boils down to finding some mystical door to the other side because I’m dead! And apparently I can’t proceed with that because cocking vampires are taking over the world.” She laughs hysterically and throws her hands up. “So excuse me if I find it a little difficult to empathize with your failed silver screen dream!”

The last thing Cutler expects from her is empathy. He heads for the door, indicating that he is nine hundred per cent done here. She can do whatever she wants. Exit stage Cutler. Most likely pursued by a bear, but no matter.

Alex moves to block his way. Her arms are folded across her chest, so he doesn’t get the imminent danger clue straight away.

“Thank you,” she says. In hindsight, this should have been the clue. “I keep looking for excuses, and you just keep handing them to me on a silver platter.”

Her fist slams into his jaw, making him stagger backwards in surprise. For the second bloody time today. He punches back automatically. It’s not hitting a woman; it’s hitting a pissed off Terminatrix.

“You hit like a girl,” Alex laughs.

“What does that even mean coming from you?”

She kicks him in the shin. He yelps. She kicks him again, just below the knee. It’s pretty painful. She isn’t even using her ghost powers.

He lunges at her; she grips his forearm, spins him around and flings him into the counter. He grits his teeth, tinged with blood, turns to face her and strikes her in the stomach with his foot as she comes closer. It doesn’t do anything of course. Alex’s body jerks, but she can’t feel pain; she is upon him, and she grasps the front of his shirt and throws him against the shelves. He lashes out and buries his fangs in her neck – only to release her a moment later as a sharp, cold pain shoots through his head. Alex uses his confusion to knee him in the stomach. Well, not the groin at least.

Cutler collapses in a heap on the floor. He feels very impressive, shaking and sweating, lying in the pool of blood, having been bashed up by a girl.

“I guess that completes the beat-you-up part of my unfinished business,” Alex concludes.

He rolls onto his back and gives her a gloomy look that spells: oh, really? He’s so glad to be of help.

“Be honest,” Cutler splutters. “Do you actually believe that I can talk down a bunch of squabbling vampires and teach them to be friends with humans, whom for the record I like only as food?”

Alex is silent. Cutler gets up and hobbles out of the shop. He licks his front teeth clean. He needs some fresh blood and she, she needs to be nicer. 

“This is what I bloody despise about you!” Alex shouts. Cutler looks back, waiting for her to elaborate. “You keep complaining that nobody takes your plans seriously and they’re all kinds of perfect and you’re so different from other vampires and you totally deserve all the riches and power and free blood and whatnot – but when it’s all handed to you, you chicken out! Are you afraid of responsibility or what?”

“I’m afraid of getting staked. I think it’s a legitimate concern given the circumstances.”

“Well, I was afraid of getting killed! I was twenty-two! I had three brothers, a Dad who’s pretty much incapable of taking care of them, a Mum who left when I was seventeen. I was going to find her and ask her why the hell she thought it’d be a good idea.”

He winces. “Stop it. It’s already done.”

“Yeah, and I died because of your stupid feud with Hal. You killed me to prove a point or take revenge or whatever. And now you’re telling me you can’t do this without Hal, that his death is a fucking paralytic! Then what the hell was mine?”

What does she want from him? Certainly not an apology. And he can’t bring her back to life, he’s not a necromancer. 

But he does feel a little guilty. A little sick. A little horrified.

And very much cornered when he spots Rook waiting patiently by the car across the street.

Alex’s face softens a little. She holds out her hand, palm up, and says:

“Come with me.”

It’s a bit of a Terminator moment, except she doesn’t add “if you want to live” because he obviously does, but he probably won’t anyway.

He takes her hand (this should be a close-up) because if he can’t have nice things, he might as well do some nice things before he faces the final curtain.

“A killer and a victim,” Rook murmurs, shaking his head in wonder. “What a peculiar alliance.”

This makes Cutler smile inwardly. He has always aimed to impress.

* * *

They go for the locals first because, while their ranks are more numerous, their minds are more flexible. They run on fury born of misplaced faith and overwhelming ambition, something that Cutler can relate to only too well.

They don’t do a power walk this time around either, but they make a pretty impressive entrance, staking a couple of security guards with such precise timing that the smoke rising from the bodies creates a veil behind them.

For once, Cutler is in no mood to muck about. His heart is beating a lot faster than it should be physically possible for a vampire, or at least so it seems. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, partly because of fear and partly because of the inevitable excitement that makes the tips of his fingers tingle as new opportunities unfold alluringly before his mind’s eye.

The vampires stare at him. There are rents in his suit, as well as stains of blood that would not pass for human at a closer inspection.

Time to save the world with words.

“My name is Nick Cutler,” he says, and notes proudly that his voice isn’t shaking. “We need to talk.”

“He’s with the Old Ones!” a voice rings out. “There’s nothing to talk about!”

A young man leaps at Nick, fangs bared. Alex reacts immediately, and the vampire is thrown violently across the room. She stands still, her hand raised menacingly, and says with a smug smirk:

“Objection overruled.”

Cutler fails to resist giving her a quizzical glance. Somebody needs to cut back on American legal dramas.

“What?” she whispers.

Cutler snorts. “Nothing.”

He doesn’t feel like such a dork anymore.

* * *

Breaking news: Wednesday, 11 April 2012, 14:08 GMT 15:08 UK

At least ten people have been killed and scores injured in the riots that broke out following an explosion at a restaurant […] No one was harmed in the explosion. Police claims gas leak. 

Following the spreading of rumours about a purported terrorist attack, riots broke out in several parts of London, during which reports were received of people “with black eyes”, attacking the other rioters and “biting them to death”. UK Prime Minister has appealed for calm. Police denied the blast was timed to precede Prime Minister’s appearance on BBC One scheduled later today and was neither a rehearsal for another attack, nor served specifically to incite riots. So far, no terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for the act. 

Home Office has stated hallucinogenic gas may have been used during the riots, accounting for the visions of fanged, black-eyed people who, according to eyewitnesses, “tore through the crowds like wild animals”.

[…]

* * *

Fade in: pale green grass sprouting in wisps around a slab of black granite. Gloved fingers brushing gently over its rounded corner. Cutler hasn’t been to a cemetery since Rachel’s burial. They make him feel a little sick at heart.

(“A gravestone,” Alex said. “A proper one.” 

Cutler very nearly regretted asking. He was pretty sure there had been no official will or anything.

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Pangs of conscience?”)

He takes a step back, looks at the inscription on the gravestone.

THOMAS MCNAIR  
FRIEND, HERO

(The last thing Alex said to him was: “Do you think it’s my fault? Because I tried to rent-a-ghost with him?”

They could probably assemble an entire blooper reel of medical mistakes they had made along the way, most of them his ideas.

“No,” Cutler said. He remembered Rook’s words: _Most of the time it doesn’t matter what you do or how hard you try or what extremes you go to. People still die._ “It’s not your fault.”)

The Archives of the Department of Domestic Defence are housed in a bunker in the woods. Cutler hates the woods. They remind him of dead coroners and werewolves and other, more widespread wild beasties that are to be avoided at all cost. He walks in circles for half an hour, cursing Rook and his stupid hideout, before he finally stumbles, out of sheer dumb luck, upon the hybrid of a bombshelter and a burial mound that serves as an entrance into Rook’s domain.

The door opens with a remote control key, which Cutler thinks is pretty cool. He walks down the stairs, squinting against the sickly yellowish light. Silent Hill at its finest.

In a corridor, the lighting changes to white. This is what Purgatory must look like. The air down here is chilly and a bit musty. There are splashes of dirty water on the concrete floor.

The Archives themselves are by far better lit. The sight of the large room lined with shelves and strong-boxes is actually quite comforting. It reminds Nick of a police station, and that’s a familiar turf.

“So this is where the magic happens,” he quips when he spots Rook standing in an aisle, watching him with an unreadable expression.

“How are you adjusting?” Rook asks. His smile will never stop giving Cutler a nasty feeling of being played.

“Apart from weekly attempts on my life? Great actually.” He’s got blood, freedom to do what he wills and no Griffins breathing down his neck. The only person he has to put up with is Rook, but Rook is bearable. So far his requests have not been unreasonable. “Not that you can change the mindset of a three-thousand-year-old species in a couple of months. Speaking of, what are you going to do now? I saw those news reports about poison gas and terrorist attacks and whatnot, but is anybody really buying it? They’ve all seen those riots with half of the participants missing from the recording. Some have even been fortunate enough to survive a close encounter. Where does that leave your department? What are you for now?”

A shadow flickers across Rook’s face, but it’s gone in a moment, replaced by a confident smirk that gives Cutler the jitters.

“ _Tempora mutantur_. Perhaps we too shall find a place in this new world.”

Cutler leans against the desk, mulling Rook’s words over. It would be a peculiar world, and Cutler places very little trust in the Department of Domestic Defence.

The desk is laid out with folders, marked with names Cutler never wants to hear again. John Mitchell. George Sands. Anna Sawyer. Box Tunnel Twenty. 

“What of Miss Millar?” Rook asks.

Cutler’s first impulse is to ask: who? He scrunches up his forehead, and then it hits him. He never even knew her last name.

“She’s with her family, I suppose. Trying to complete a list of unfinished business things. To, you know, pass over.”

That can’t happen soon enough.

“Are you going to assist her?”

Cutler released a half-choked laugh. That hasn’t even occurred to him. But then, he probably owes her.

“I… don’t know. Maybe?”

Not to mention that would be one surefire way to see the back of her.

Rook comes closer, puts his hand on Cutler’s shoulder. Cutler looks at it like it’s poisonous.

“While we’re at it, I should very much like to thank you for your cooperation,” says Rook. “You have been an invaluable asset.”

Isn’t that what misfortunate mooks are usually told before the resident Doctor Evil chucks them into a vat filled with boiling oil or venomous snakes or venomous snakes swimming in boiling oil?

Cutler smiles nervously. 

“You’re welcome. The things one does for free blood.”

“I believe we have got a surprise for you.” Rook steers him out of the Archives and into a long corridor. “Think of it as a token of our amity.”

That doesn’t sound ominous at all. Cutler collects himself and allows Rook to lead the way. The lights here are red and the whitewash scales off the ceiling; the place would make a great zombie discotheque.

The corridor ends in a dimly lit room with lots of barred holding cells. This must be their infamous containment area. For a moment, Cutler imagines Rook pushing him into the nearest cell, locking the door and throwing away the key. For all he knows, that’s what “amity” means in Rook speak.

“The last door at the end,” says Rook, apocalyptically.

The cells are all empty, all welcoming. Cutler walks slowly past them, squinting at the glares of light bouncing off the walls covered in white tile. If Rook should stake him here, it would be very poetic. After all, he was made in one of these.

He stops in front of the last cell. The lighting was better, the suit was more posh and the outcome was different – but hey, déjà vu.

Cutler smiles and says:

“Hello, Hal.”

_January 14 – March 29, 2013_


End file.
